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Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 420

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Latest comment: 11 months ago by ActivelyDisinterested in topic ARF related sources on AA topics
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National Post reprint of Foundation for Defense of Democracies paper

Latest comment: 11 months ago13 comments7 people in discussion

A user is saying that this article in the National Post is a reliable independent source to state that Hamas has been identified by independent sources as using ambulances as part of its operations. at Al-Shifa ambulance airstrike. They say that because the author field is "Jewish News Syndicate, National Post Wire Services" that they are publishing this in their own voice and are a reliable source. The piece, as noted at the end, is a reprint of an article at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which scholarly articles have identified as part of the Israel lobby in the United States and is a registered lobbying organization, and the Israeli government has said it works with the lobby. The paper is reprinted in full and attribution given as a reprint. The paper itself references IDF releases for its claims, the paragraph Hamas has also used ambulances during the course of the war as part of its operations. The use of ambulances not only denies civilians who are injured the use of the ambulance but also puts at risk medical workers if terrorists use the ambulance in the course of their activities. links to an Israeli Embassy paper (as shown in the quote here) based on an IDF report that it earlier also links. The user is saying that that The independent source says, in its own voice, Hamas has also used ambulances during the course of the war as part of its operations. Is this a reliable secondary source for including these statements of fact, and not a claim by the Israeli military/government? nableezy - 04:54, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

It's clearly not an independent statement and if used at all, should be explicitly attributed to the IDF, e.g. "the IDF claimed that..." Hemiauchenia (talk) 05:03, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm not seeing how it's not an independent statement; while the source does link to the IDF statement, they make the statement in their own voice - it's no different to use making a statement in Wikivoice and still providing references for said statement. BilledMammal (talk) 05:10, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
There are other sources which confirm the usage of ambulances by Hamas
  • The "Gaza War" A Strategic Analysis by Anthony Cordesman, p. 65 says that Hamas made "Use of ambulances to mobilize terrorists" during the 2008-2009 war
  • In this article in Corriere della Sera, it's said explicitly that Hamas used ambulances in the 2009 war and there are eyewitness testimonies.
Alaexis¿question? 10:34, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
See WP:SYNTH, and that doesn’t answer the question on if a pro Israel lobby that works with the Israeli government can possibly be considered an independent source for claims against an enemy of Israel. Which is the relevant question for this board. nableezy - 12:36, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Comment: I think this is misleading: scholarly articles have identified as part of the Israel lobby in the United States and is a registered lobbying organization. There are three "scholarly articles" cited on the FDD page, actually all books, which are extremely partisan and two of them are pretty obscure. The non-obscure one is Mearsheimer's extremely controversial The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. I don't this is how the preponderance of reliable sources describe it. The FDD registered as a lobbying organisation in 2019, but not to lobby for Israel: FDD Action will lobby on several pieces of legislation, including efforts to give Syrian Kurds and others who partnered with US forces in Syria special immigrant status; prevent US funding from going to areas under the control of Bashar al-Assad via the United Nations; direct the State Department to issue reports on Saudi Arabia’s school textbooks and whether they’re encouraging violence; and boost cooperation between the United States and Israel to counter “killer drones.” The group also disclosed it would lobby on no fewer than four bills that would impose sanctions on Turkey following Ankara’s incursion into northeast Syria to roll back US-backed Kurdish militants.[1] This doesn't necessarily affect reliability, but clarifies its stake in the Israel/Palestine issue. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:26, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
    "boost cooperation between the United States and Israel to counter “killer drones”" <-- this seems like a pretty straightforward example of them lobbying the US government specifically to aid Israel. --JBL (talk) 19:13, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
    That is just what is cited on that page. I can give plenty more. Here is Carl Boggs writing "Politicians across the political landscape-all beholden to the well-funded and hyper-aggressive Israel lobby-... which includes such organizations as ... the Foundation for Defense of Democracies". Is there anybody disputing that FDD is a member of the pro-Israel lobby in the US? nableezy - 15:14, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
    Personally, I don't think it is relevant; being part of the lobby doesn't mean it isn't independent or that it is unreliable - it only means it is biased. And we don't toss out sources because they are biased; for example, Al Jazeera and especially Al Jazeera Arabic are biased on topics of importance to the Qatari State, but we still use them. BilledMammal (talk) 15:18, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
    If you lobby on behalf of a government's interest you are not independent. All the more so given that this paper is regurgitating IDF propaganda, including with the direct links to it. You initially attempted to use the veneer of reliability of the byline in the reprint saying "Jewish News Syndicate, National Post Wire Services" to skip past the part where this is entirely based on reports by the Israeli army passed off as established fact, but that is what this is. nableezy - 16:25, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
    If you lobby on behalf of a government's interest you are not independent. If you are independently choosing to lobby on behalf of another's interests you are independent; biased, but independent.
    You initially attempted to use the veneer of reliability of the byline Both are true. There is no reason to believe the initial source is unreliable, and even if it was, this specific report has been endorsed by other reliable sources. BilledMammal (talk) 08:50, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
    Appear to be alone in that belief. nableezy - 21:35, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Is Wafa a reliable source?

Latest comment: 11 months ago15 comments7 people in discussion

Wafa is the state media agency of the State of Palestine. It primarily covers two areas: (a) domestic Palestinian affairs and (b) the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. How should Wafa be treated on Wikipedia?

  • Option 1: It is generally reliable.
  • Option 2a: It is reliable for domestic Palestinian affairs but is not reliable for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
  • Option 2b: It is reliable for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but is not reliable for domestic Palestinian affairs.
  • Option 3: It is generally unreliable.
  • Option 4: Deprecate.

Closetside (talk) 14:34, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Option 4. Wafa has no editorial independence from its parent organization, the State of Palestine, which is currently autocratically governed by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority.[1] Therefore, it is very biased in favor of the PA.
Additionally, Muhammad Abbas, the leader of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, recently got caught endorsing the discredited Khazar hypothesis and justifying the Holocaust in a speech to senior Fatah officials. He also made other false and dubious claims during the speech.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Therefore, there is no indication WAFA is reliable for reporting the facts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In conclusion, WAFA is a questionable source that should not be relied on in Wikipedia's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Considering other sources were corroborate Wafa when they report facts, there is no need to cite Wafa. Therefore, I support its deprecation. Closetside (talk) 14:35, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
Option 3, generally unreliable and of minimal encyclopedic use but not sure we'e at deprecation... Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:15, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
You don't. A RFC is improper at this time. Follow the instructions at the top of the page. Ask a specific question with all three elements:(1) Source (2) Article (3) Content, with links. Banks Irk (talk) 16:06, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
We have a list containing many sources and their reliability (Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources). Why can't we have a discussion to add Wafa to the list? Closetside (talk) 16:14, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
This is not 'Nam, this is RSN. There are rules. Banks Irk (talk) 16:20, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
How do those sources get added to the list? Isn't the level of consensus about the reliability of a source determined by an RfC on the reliability of a source? Closetside (talk) 16:22, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
Read Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources#Inclusion_criteria Banks Irk (talk) 16:27, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Line, Media (August 18, 2015). "In first, PA appoints woman head of official Palestinian news agency". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. Retrieved October 9, 2020.
  2. ^ Knel, Yolande (2023-09-07). "Outrage over Abbas's antisemitic speech on Jews and Holocaust". BBC News. Retrieved 27 September 2023.
  3. ^ "US and EU slam Palestinian president's remarks on Holocaust". 7 September 2023 – via www.reuters.com.
  4. ^ Kingsley, Patrick (7 September 2023). "Antisemitic Comments by Palestinian Leader Cause Uproar". New York Times. Retrieved 10 September 2023.
  5. ^ "Abbas: Ashkenazi Jews 'are not Semites,' Hitler killed them for their 'social role'". Times of Israel. 6 September 2023. Retrieved 10 September 2023.
  6. ^ Berman, Lazar; Magid, Jacob (7 September 2023). "US antisemitism envoy and EU denounce Mahmoud Abbas's speech: Distorts the Holocaust". The Times of Israel. Retrieved 10 September 2023.
  7. ^ McKernan, Bethan (11 September 2023). "Palestinian intellectuals condemn Mahmoud Abbas's antisemitic comments" – via The Guardian.
  8. ^ Speri, Alice (15 September 2023). "Mahmoud Abbas Holocaust Controversy Spotlights Deep Disillusion With Palestinian Authority". The Intercept.

Interpretation of a German-language source

Latest comment: 11 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

People familiar with German are invited to comment at Talk:Rupperswil murder case#On the use of the mobile phone data. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 17:11, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Lawnext.com, LawSites magazine

Latest comment: 11 months ago7 comments3 people in discussion

See this RSN on attorneyatlawmagazine.com. My initial impression of lawnext.com is that it's the same kind of gig (features for pay, which are then used to establish notability to get an article from paid editors on run-of-the-mill attorneys doing run-of-the-mill stuff that attorneys do), but I'm uncertain and need other opinions. The features have a very commercial feel, and advertising is pushed, but on the other hand, it's not as blatant feature-for-pay as attorneyatlawmagazine.com, so I'm unsure here. Sample uses are all of questionable notability if not for this source, suggesting it may be used for pay as a route to for getting a Wikipedia article for pay.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:16, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

From the footer of Lawnext.com's front page: "LawSites is a blog covering legal technology and innovation. It is written by Robert Ambrogi, a lawyer and journalist who has been writing and speaking about legal technology, legal practice and legal ethics for more than two decades."
So it's a self-published blog. Whether paid for or not, it cannot be used as a source for individual living lawyers, per WP:BLPSPS. I suspect that knocks out the vast majority of its uses. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 15:51, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
Agreed, it is a SPS, and although the blogger might qualify as a SME, it still can't be used in a BLP.Banks Irk (talk) 16:24, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
Well, while searching for other stuff, I sure missed that :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:10, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
Easy thing to overlook. And I agree with you about some student editing courses being problematic. I find that, more often than not, the writing and sourcing coming out of these assignments are completely unacceptable for an encyclopedia, as if whomever is running these classes didn't bothered to instruct the students on the most basis principles of how articles should be sourced and written. But I digress. Banks Irk (talk) 20:05, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
Banks Irk browse every link at that page, if you want to become totally demoralized about non-notable articles getting through, often via student editing because they are encouraged to choose topics from these lists. I only found this course because I regularly check backlinks to attorneyatlawmagazine.com ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:08, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
Sometimes, the solution is easier than the problem presumes! -- Nat Gertler (talk) 00:45, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Find a Grave clarification

Latest comment: 11 months ago18 comments9 people in discussion

At present the WP:RSP#Find a Grave listing for Find a Grave reads as follows:

The content on Find a Grave is user-generated, and is therefore considered generally unreliable. Links to Find a Grave may sometimes be included in the external links section of articles, when the site offers valuable additional content, such as images not permitted for use on Wikipedia. Take care that the Find a Grave page does not itself contain prohibited content, such as copyright violations.

This is only partially correct. To clarify, I recommend the following:

Interment information for individuals on Find a Grave is usually user-generated, and is therefore considered generally unreliable as a reliable source. Information about listed cemeteries and "famous" people is under the editorial control of Find a Grave itself but remains unusable as a reliable source. Accordingly, links to Find a Grave interment listings may sometimes be included in the external links section of articles, when the site offers valuable additional content, such as images not permitted for use on Wikipedia. Links to Find a Grave cemetery pages are generally acceptable in article External links sections. In all cases take care that the Find a Grave page does not itself contain prohibited content, such as copyright violations. [Strike-out – Is this sentence useful, correct, or needed?][Italics – added verbage.]

This change distinguishes between the user-generated burial listings and the website-generated or controlled information. E.g. WP:RSCONTEXT. – S. Rich (talk) 15:53, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

How do we know what is " website-generated or controlled information"? and the current wording "such as images not permitted for use on Wikipedia" this seems to be the reverse of WP:COPYVIOEL. This site should be blacklisted in my view...pure junk.Moxy-  16:44, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
@Moxy: The sentence about copyright violation has been there for years. I modified it slightly because there are two editing issues involved - cemetery listings and individual grave listings. Does the sentence need changing, or can we remove it entirely? – S. Rich (talk) 19:57, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
Can you provide evidence to support this assertation? Also how do we tell what is user generated and what isn't, is there a flag or data point? Canterbury Tail talk 16:55, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
Each listing for individuals shows the name of the "member" who originally "created" the listing. Each "famous" listing is marked as such and shows Find a Grave as "maintaining" the listing. This information is at the bottom of each "memorial" page. Two major sources to FAG are the International War Graves Project (an organization that has posted 1.7 million FAG listings) and the US Veterans Affairs Department for 1.9 million FAG listings. My suggested edit concerns two issues: 1. The cemetery pages are not user-generated, and 2. the "famous" pages are controlled by FAG itself. This problem needs de-conflation. – S. Rich (talk) 17:19, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
Note that the International War Graves Project appears to be run by several self-selected members, not experts. Ed [talk] [OMT] 17:26, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
The cemetery pages are user-generated. From the "how to" page https://support.findagrave.com/s/article/Adding-a-Memorial - "Add a new cemetery if the cemetery is not in the cemetery database" and the link takes you to a page where you can do just that.
In short - No, Findagrave is not reliable enough for the purpopses of Wikipedia. It may be acceptable as an external link but not as a source. The existing assessment of its reliability is sufficient.Daveosaurus (talk) 04:50, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Related discussion at Talk:Arlington National Cemetery#FindaGrave. Ed [talk] [OMT] 17:26, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Managing the user-generated content doesn't make it reliable. What evidence is there that it has "a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy"? --Hipal (talk) 17:38, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
Genealogy is an academic field of study. There are likely books/papers that discuss this source, such as in the journals The Genealogist and The American Genealogist. -- GreenC 17:52, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
The journal The American Genealogist appears to accept citations to "findagrave" (search on that word), because it says in the next sentence the type of material it does not accept ie. it says we accept findagrave but we don't accept these other things. That doesn't mean it will always be accepted in individual cases, but it's within the bounds of what it considers acceptable. -- GreenC 18:00, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
It says, (e.g., ancestry.com, findagrave.com, fold3.com, familysearch.org, americanancestors.org). That's poor company. I wouldn't consider it evidence for the type of reputation required. --Hipal (talk) 21:22, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
@Hipal: FAG is owned and operated by Ancestry.com, which is itself owned by Blackstone Inc.. Ancestry.com is a multi-billion dollar company, and Blackstone is a trillion dollar company. I think this is evidence of FAG's reputation. But the question I present deals with the RS description and how it should be changed. E.g., what we do with individual burial listings vs. the cemetery listings. The hundreds of million individual burial listings may or may not be accurate, but we don't care because those deceased do not have WP articles. But for WP articles about the cemeteries we ought to include all relevant, encyclopedic information. (The cemetery infobox, with a parameter for the FAG cemetery ID, serves that purpose.) For both, however, we can exercise our editing skills and judgment to look at the source and evaluate accuracy. – S. Rich (talk) 19:51, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
I think this is evidence of FAG's reputation Not at all. --Hipal (talk) 20:21, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
I think this is evidence of FAG's reputation News Corp is quite large, and the Sun is still deprecated - David Gerard (talk) 20:34, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
Considering Ancestry.com is prohibited as a reliable source per WP:ANCESTRY that's not a good argument. Canterbury Tail talk 20:44, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
That would be a hard no then. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:23, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

My apologies to all – I should have started this discussion at the Perennial sources Talk page or at WP:EL/N. The issue I presented is NOT whether Find a Grave is a reliable SOURCE for citations in article texts. Rather I'm seeking to clarify the acceptable use of FindaGrave links in the External links section of articles. Can we move the discussion and user comments to one of those pages? (PS: I agree that FindaGrave is not a reliable source and I'm sorry that the discussion here has twisted around that issue.) – S. Rich (talk) 17:26, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Can these be used as a source?

Latest comment: 11 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I know social media sites are considered unreliable only with a few exceptions. But the Twitter and Instagram pages for Loyola Chicago University have these up. It's in regards to the year entrepreneur Lori Greiner graduated from there.[3][4] I could be wrong, but they seem to be the actual LCU Twitter and Instagram accounts. Kcj5062 (talk) 06:03, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

No. See WP:BLPSPS. AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:54, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Newsweek AI

Latest comment: 11 months ago12 comments7 people in discussion

WP:NEWSWEEK is generally unreliable but maybe need to be deprecated because articles use AI for writing, research, editing or other core journalism functions but dont tell readers when. Policy says Any journalist using any AI tool on a core journalism function must disclose that to their editor and the publishing desk. Any tool not previously used by Newsweek must be approved by the Standards Editor. [5]

Newsweek AI policy
As Newsweek evaluates AI-based tools that might help reporters, video editors, copy editors, assignment editors and others do their jobs more effectively, we will roll them out to the newsroom. Sometimes these tools will be deployed to small teams as experiments. These experiments will always be bound by the rules in this policy.

Newsweek believes that AI tools can help journalists work faster, smarter and more creatively. Sometimes, a tool will take away the more burdensome tasks of day-to-day journalism. In other cases, AI may put a project that was too time-consuming or expensive to pursue within our newsroom's grasp. We firmly believe that soon all journalists will be working with AI in some form and we want our newsroom to embrace these technologies as quickly as is possible in an ethical way.

AI is not accountable to Newsweek readers: we are. The burden of ensuring that all stories or other content meets Newsweek standards rests with our writers, editors and producers, always.

To that end, we will always comply with the following rules when working with AI:

IMAGES

Newsweek will not publish AI generated images - either video or still pictures - that appear lifelike.

WRITTEN CONTENT - CORE FUNCTIONS

If a piece of written content involves the use of AI tools in writing, research, editing or other core journalism functions, there will always be three or more journalists involved in producing the story—an assigning editor, a reporter and a publishing editor.

WRITTEN CONTENT - SUPPORTING FUNCTIONS

The rules requiring the involvement of three journalists does not apply when AI tools are simply used to support a journalist's work such as for note taking, transcription and video script writing, writing social copy, A/B testing headlines, adding metadata or selecting images. However, the journalist using such tools will be responsible for ensuring they do not give rise to errors.

DISCLOSURE

Any journalist using any AI tool on a core journalism function must disclose that to their editor and the publishing desk. Any tool not previously used by Newsweek must be approved by the Standards Editor.

Softlem (talk) 13:44, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

My initial impression is that their AI use policy does not move the needle either way on them being "generally unreliable". As before, if there's something they have to say that's worth repeating it probably will be published in a more reliable source elsewhere. VQuakr (talk) 18:53, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
Ok Softlem (talk) 18:57, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
Tend to agree on that. But as to extend to the future, their AI policy, which would require any AI content to pass through at least 3 human editors, seems to be a good bar to look for in other publications that opt to employ AI. And yes, if we know something was written with AI even with such a policy in place, and there's a more reliable source that we know didn't employ AI, it would clearly be better to use that other source that lacks AI. Masem (t) 19:31, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
It's not received much attention, but the same is being done across pretty much all news outlets, including many we label WP:GREL, for example The Guardian. I haven't bookmarked articles covering this, but I recall some coverage in Axios (there were many others). DFlhb (talk) 19:58, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
Hopefully reputable outlets will adopt a practice of labeling/disclaiming content that was written with AI involvement, but we're in rather uncharted territory here. VQuakr (talk) 19:59, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
Agree it is uncharted territory. Maybe there should be WP policy if it is being done across pretty much all news outlets Softlem (talk) 20:22, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
Certainly worthy of discussion. Personally, I think the best course of action is to wait and see how other tertiary sources manage it. I don't have a crystal ball, but I suspect there will be some high-profile flubs as the result of AI journalism that will result in better practices if not actual regulation. VQuakr (talk) 23:07, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
  • It's definitely something to be concerned about (though as noted they're GUNREL anyway), but this it too vague. Using AI as a limited tool for copyediting and the like doesn't necessarily implicate a source's reliability as long as there's still human editorship and fact-checking; whereas writing articles using it whole-cloth or passing the straight from AI to publication without (or with insufficient) human oversight definitely is. I think the thing to do is to take a look at secondary coverage of sources that have used these tools and see what they say about each; ultimately the question is always whether it impacts their reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. --Aquillion (talk) 02:48, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
    Using AI as a limited tool for copyediting and the like Theyre using it for research
    I think the thing to do is to take a look at secondary coverage of sources that have used these tools and see what they say about each Ok Softlem (talk) 10:31, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
    I'm on wikibreak but if don't say this now the discussion might be archived by the time I return. I think we have to be very careful about assuming AI=unreliable/untrustworthy or is somehow automatically worse than what people are already doing; and therefore its use is some sort of poisonous tree so anything that results is fruit from the poisonous tree. I'm fairly sure many journalists even those from GREL use Google searches as part of their research at times and this would rarely be mentioned in the article unless it's a specific part of their story. We know Google has its own biases and its results can be influenced by your search history especially if you are logged in. I have never used Bing's new AI chatbot thing, but if a journalist did use this I'm unconvinced this means anything they produce is automatically suspect. Perhaps the risks with such things are greater than with a Google search but again the 'assigning editor, a reporter and a publishing editor' along with any fact-checkers and anyone else involved should be using their skill and expertise to mitigate these risks just as they did with Google searches. Yes a lot of the AI stuff and its use is still fairly new, which means its limitations and risks may not be so well understood so additional care needs to be taken compared to a Google search but let's be realistic, I'm fairly sure if we go further back, I'm fairly sure journalists were using Lycos, Altavista and all sorts of stuff and this was never disclosed on the story except when it was part of the story. Nil Einne (talk) 10:22, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
    LLMs are not search engines. They are text generators with an error rate that is unusable for Wikipedia sourcing. As factual sources, they are poison trees.
Usage in formerly-usable publications has so far been entirely to generate any old rubbish to get clicks and fire staff who would write anything better. c.f. the RedVentures stable.
Newsweek was already digging through the bottom of the barrel, so in this particular case it's more of the same. - David Gerard (talk) 16:42, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

References in Sacking of Burhanpur (1681)

Latest comment: 11 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion

I recently discovered that the cited reference for the article "Sacking of Burhanpur (1681)" is untraceable, neither on Google Books nor in my usual sources for article references. Can we consider the source 'Bahekar, S.A. (1999). Martiyar Sambhaji. Jalgaon: Kasab Publications' reliable? Ajayraj890 (talk) 15:29, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

No idea. I can't find any mention of the book, the author or the publisher anywhere on the interwebs other than at Wikipedia or various mirrors. The article talkpage says that there is at least one other book that characterizes this source as "scholarly", that author appears to be a historian who has written a number of books on Indian history. That might be good enough; a source doesn't need to be available online to be reliable and verifiable. There are still libraries. But, I still have no idea whether the publisher is simply small and obscure with no online presence or if the reference is self-published. I suppose you could ask User:Charvak157 to provide some additional information on the book and author. He wrote Sacking of Burhanpur (1681), and also mentioned the source at Talk:Sambhaji/Archive_2#Sambhaji_-_old_references_vs_new_references, though he hasn't posted at Wikipedia in roughly a year. Banks Irk (talk) 16:15, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
Nor can I. I suppose bonadea may recall where they found the literature review mentioned at talk:Sacking of Burhanpur (1681), but it was three years ago so I'm not optimistic. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:05, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Dendy Media

Latest comment: 11 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion

This company appears to be a straight PR company where one can pay to get a "story" featured on various websites. My opinion is that any story provided by this company, regardless of the webhost that published it, is not a reliable source. At issue is my removal of this source and the associated text from Elisa Jordana, which appears to be a vanity article. That removal was mentioned by an editor in the current deletion discussion. I'd appreciate the thoughts of any editors that are experts about reliable sources. Fred Zepelin (talk) 23:32, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

It is clearly paid media by a very sketchy PR site that has since been removed by the local news outlet that had carried the article. It is not a reliable independent source for either content or notability. Best of luck at the AFD#5. Banks Irk (talk) 00:54, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
The reference in question: here
I only found it being used once elsewhere, and removed it [6]. --Hipal (talk) 01:10, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

enca.com

Latest comment: 11 months ago4 comments2 people in discussion

enca.com    
eNCA (enca.com) is a 24-hours television news channel owned by e.tv, it is primarily laser focused on African stories and it is arguably South Africa's most watched/viewed news feed. It is cited on hundreds of Wikipedia articles. I am here seeking help to assess it's reliability. dxneo (talk) 11:19, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Do you have a specific question about the source's reliability in the context of a specific citation for a specific statement in a specific article? Banks Irk (talk) 16:17, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
Banks Irk, concerned about linkrot like what happened here but once I used the IABot link was rescued, I think it might have happened in other articles that cites the site also. dxneo (talk) 08:31, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
I still don't understand the issue. Is there a question about reliability once you've solved the linkrot issue? Banks Irk (talk) 13:31, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

NewsClick (Indian Online news portal)

Latest comment: 11 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

NewsClick : The New York Times has reported that Indian news portal NewsClick is implicated in an investigation linking it to a network funded by US millionaire Neville Roy Singham, accused of promoting Chinese propaganda. The allegations against NewsClick were initially raised by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in 2021 during a search of the portal's premises as part of a probe into alleged foreign remittances.

Please review the attached links:

NYT Report

Chinese funding


The news outlet is under serious allegations and has biased reporting as suggested by neutral observers.

It should be either deprecated or termed as Generally Unreliable unless proven otherwise. SpunkyGeek (talk) 07:10, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

  • It is premature to commence a discussion regarding deprecation per the instructions at the top of this page. While the source is referenced in a couple hundred articles for one purpose or another, there have not been several prior discussions of the source at RSN. One discussion was started here, but closed after the single comment that biased sources can still be reliable.
Is there a live actual dispute over the reliability of a specific reference to this source for a specific statement in a specific Wikipedia article? Banks Irk (talk) 15:19, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

angela goethals

Latest comment: 11 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion
WRONG FORUM
Not a question relating to sources NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts> 21:09, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


what will it take for wikipedia to say at angela bethany goethals's wikipedia bio that her date of birth is may 20 1977?

and that she has been married to russell soder since 2005?

and that she has 2 kids?

because that's very important information you're leaving about her wikipedia! Robby mercier (talk) 15:56, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Reliable sources Softlem (talk) 16:07, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Is OEIS reliable for this use?

Latest comment: 11 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I am looking at 227 (number) and I notice the article is sourced to OEIS entries. If I remember correctly, the site is user-gen, making it not reliable. Is it reliable enough to use? NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts> 20:51, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

There is a large panel of mathematicians who vet and review any submissions before they are included, so it is not really a Wiki, and is widely regarded as reliable by experts. I defer to their expertise and have no problem in it being used as a source in articles that I do not understand at all. Banks Irk (talk) 21:37, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
Good to know, thanks.
  Resolved
NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts> 21:47, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Palestinian Information Center; Hamas run?

Latest comment: 11 months ago5 comments3 people in discussion

Who are they? It seems that their website is blocked by the PLO authorities in the West Bank. Synotia (moan) 07:36, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Washington Independent

Latest comment: 11 months ago7 comments4 people in discussion

I'm not really asking for your opinion though it is welcome, I just need something to link to while I wipe references to this trash: https://washingtonindependent.com/.
The name makes it sound like something reliable. And their logo uses the Chomsky font, so it MUST be good!

So now I can link this section when I wipe this reference from articles. Note that other publications with the same name (used to?) exist which may or may not be reliable. But this one isn't. Back in 2009 it was something different entirely: [9], see Washington Independent for what used to be at this domain. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 19:02, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't be quite that fast. One of the former publications of what is now the American Independent Institute, was the Washington Independent, which was then run by experienced journalists. Not sure at this point that the site being cited is the same or not. Banks Irk (talk) 19:55, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
Banks Irk, per my last edit the site looked very different (and better) in 2009. The current site is just garbage. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 20:05, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
It occurred to me that there might be a cutoff date where articles from the source before that date are usable, and articles after that date are not. But, I agree that there is nothing about the current site which comes close to qualifying as a reliable source. Banks Irk (talk) 20:37, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
Banks Irk, to make matters more complicated: https://web.archive.org/web/20091219163640/http://washingtonindependent.com/55152/cato-institute-finds-180-billion-benefit-to-legalizing-illegal-immigrants "By Daphne Eviatar 8/14/09 3:31 PM". In October 2013 it's the same. Then there are no snapshots for 7 years and around 2020-2021 we see things like [10]. The text is the same but this article is "Last updated: July 31, 2020 | August 14, 2009 | Pooja Bean". In 2022 the article was written by Ismaeel Delgado and still "Last updated: Jul 31, 2020 | Aug 14, 2009".
My money is on republished articles from the original site being copyright infringements. You'll find some good-looking content on the current site, and it shouldn't be used as a reference here. Only archived pages. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 21:25, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
I thought I'd have a look at one of their articles and who wrote it. The author was William Willis, it's laughably bad even if she does have six years of writing experience (I have a suspicion it's fake and written by ai). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:08, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

If it helps, LinkedIn tells me that it was a startup in 2005 and its only recorded editor stopped working there in 2010. Uncle G (talk) 09:58, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Sources used on David wood article.

Latest comment: 11 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

A user reverted my edits on David Wood article, where I was adding a section for critisisms. Can anyone see that if sources I used were unreliable or whether the info was not WP:Due. 182.183.20.126 (talk) 11:57, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Well for a start some of them seem to be blogs, so may not be RS. Also we tend to try and avoid criticism sections. Slatersteven (talk) 12:59, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

ww2gravestone.com

Latest comment: 11 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Is ww2gravestone.com (about page [11]) a reliable source for the medals awarded to Hans Krebs (Wehrmacht general)? Source cited is [12] - cites added here. The source doesn't seem to directly state what medals were awarded anyway, although it does present a number of photos of medals, and it appears to be a self-published website according to the about page.Nigel Ish (talk) 15:17, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

  • This is a self-published website by an amateur WWII history buff, who has not been independently published by any reliable, secondary, independent publisher. It is not a reliable source. Banks Irk (talk) 16:52, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Clearly, a self-published website. Which means no editorial oversight. I do not see where any footnotes, nor citations to RS books and sources are given for the sketchy information written therein. Agree, it is not shown to be a reliable source. Kierzek (talk) 22:24, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

RfC: Venezuelanalysis

Latest comment: 11 months ago106 comments16 people in discussion
The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There is consensus that Venezuelanalysis is generally unreliable. Concerns over lack of editorial oversight, false information, and overt bias have widespread support, and the assertion made in one response that there was no evidence of fabricated claims was rebutted. There was also an argument for usability in some circumstances that focused on bias, but it didn't adequately address the other concerns, and other points in the statement were countered. That leaves us where we were before this RFC started. In the future, please do not open RFCs at RSN unless there is specific content at issue, or the source is broadly used. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:29, 18 November 2023 (UTC)



What is the reliability of Venezuelanalysis?

Previous RfC from March 2019 can be viewed here. WMrapids (talk) 00:40, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

  • Option 2: After reviewing Bolivarian propaganda article, which was riddled with original research and WP:BLP violations, I encountered Venezuelanalysis. At first glance, it is clearly sympathetic to Bolivarianism and, yes, it appears that its creation was assisted by the Venezuelan government. However, it now says that it is funded by individual readers and not from any governments (if we can take their word for it). Many of the !votes in the previous RfC were focused on bias and not on substance. While there is one argument arguing over a recognition map (which was highly contested at the time), other users simply made the charge of "fake news" without evidence.
As Rosguill said in the previous RfC, there does not appear to be blatant disinformation in the articles and the site does openly criticized the government (reporting protests against police who arrested LGBTQI+ individuals, labor protests against the government[13][14][15], a "crackdown" on indigenous protests and criticized policies by the government, including the ineffectiveness of anti-illegal mining policy). So while a clear bias exists, there appears to be some criticism of the Venezuelan government as well. Knowing that consensus can change and context matters, Venezuelanalysis should be used with additional considerations and properly attributed.--WMrapids (talk) 00:41, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
In addition, there appears to be editorial oversight and journalists, contrary to the argument that there are only "activists" working for VA.
Also, Venezuelanalysis has been cited in articles by multiple peer-reviewed scholarly journals for nearly two decades, including:
So we have editors and journalists that have reputable academic backgrounds that are recognized by generally reliable sources and we have widespread usage of Venezuelanalysis being cited in scholarly journals. Should make the website suitable for "additional considerations" at a minimum.--WMrapids (talk) 18:33, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
I would say "blatant disinformation" would be grounds for option 4 not option 3, so I don't think this is a valid argument against the current consensus.
However, the examples of recent articles more critical of the government are interesting; it may be that there is a shift at the website and it might make sense to review the reliability of recent news articles in the future. However, I checked other recent articles by the same journalists and saw examples of problematic reporting. (For example compare this (essentially a dressed up government PR statement) to this fact based report of the same incident. Or this distorting report to this reliable report.) BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:08, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
Bobfrombrockley yes, there has been a shift in chavismo strategy for several reasons. One is the International Criminal Court's looking into the evidence for crimes against humanity; shifting blame for those crimes to lowly peons, and critical reporting of those lowly peons, will help the higher ups escape sanction. Another is a move towards capitalism: see for example this Bloomberg report on the propaganda trend. But more relevant is Biden relaxing sanctions in the hopes of free elections next year. By appearing to allow free elections, while barring the leading candidate from running, Maduro gives the impression of free elections, which provides a win–win for chavismo. The examples of reporting critical of the Maduro administration merely reinforces that Venezuelanalysis is on the same propaganda page and well tuned in to the importance of reporting on certain issues with respect to advancing their overall aim, which is the appearance of free and fair elections and no sanctions for crimes against humanity. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:29, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for doing some digging Bobfrombrockley, you show that there is a clear difference in the quality of reporting between VA and Al Jazeera. I agree with what you are saying overall (I think), but there should be additional considerations for Venezuelanalysis instead of outright banning it from Wikipedi since it may be useful in some circumstances. As you can see from my comments below, once a source is labeled "unreliable", even if there is a mention of it being attributed, it is essentially given a death sentence by users. So in a similar manner to the (unclear) decision with La Patilla, I don't think Venezuelanalysis should be considered generally reliable at all, that it should be used in contentious articles/claims or for statements of fact, but I do think that it can be used as a secondary source for some Venezuelan government statements (especially since most Venezuelan government sources are essentially deprecated) and that if it is used, that it is properly attributed. Placing in the RSP list on how it could be used in specific circumstances while explicitly outlining how it should be excluded would be beneficial as it would prevent further disputes and misuse while also preventing future, long-winded discussions on what should be permitted. WMrapids (talk) 20:58, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
@WMrapids: Per WP:BLUDGEON and previous related concerns, could you considering collapsing your last additions? I have tried to do the same in the last RfCs when I include a long list of links, and by experience I think we can both agree it would be for the best. Regards, --NoonIcarus (talk) 00:13, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
I'd rather not collapse an addition to my original decision and please don’t do it for me while also labeling it as bludgeoning. You’re casting aspersions. WMrapids (talk) 18:13, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
  • As noted below, that quote is taken out of context. It is not an instruction that it is OK to start a new RFC, it is simply a legend for the symbol used on RSP for 4+ year old consensus discussions. Banks Irk (talk) 15:39, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
However, if I have to leave some comments: if time has taught us anything about Venezuelanalysis, is that it definitely should not be used. The fact that Venezuelanalysis has been funded by the Venezuelan government should not be in question, because Gregory Wilpert himself (co-founder of VA) admitted in an interview with ZMag receiving money from the Venezuelan Ministry of Culture. It does not have editorial independence, its editorial staff is made up of members from deprecated outlets, and its bias affects its reliability. A report from the Venezuelan fact-checking coalition C-Informa offers more insight ("Portals of lies: the international swarm of "independent media" at the service of Chavista narratives". Please read the full article if you have a chance, since it as informative as it is long):
  • In the case of media such as Venezuelanalysis, Orinoco Tribune and even the now censored Aporrea, a team full of current and former Venezuelan diplomats in the United States, former ministers and both former and active editors of Telesur, RT and Venezuelan state media operates.
  • Here the network shows the least visible and at the same time most powerful node: Venezuelanalysis is the one that has the highest levels of coordination and influence with governmental bodies, thanks to the fact that it has in its team former Chavez ministers, former officials of the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, former editors of Telesur English and even those accused of corruption in the United States.
  • Its staff includes: Andreína Chávez Alava (former editor-in-chief of Telesur Ecuador), Cira Pascual Marquina (professor at Universidad Bolivariana), Rachael Boothroyd (Telesur correspondent and collaborator of Alborada) and Jessica Dos Santos (Actualidad RT and Épale Ccs, with three journalism awards given by the Chávez and Maduro governments) (...) And among its collaborators, the Venezuelan-American Eva Golinger, author of Chávez Code, a book with conspiracy theories on the assassination of Hugo Chávez with nanotechnological weapons, whose ideas are found in a great part of the network studied, thanks to the support especially given by ActualidadRT, Telesur and Sputnik.
  • The Venezuelanalysis team also includes former officials such as Reinaldo Iturriza López (former Minister of Culture and former Minister of Communes of Maduro between April 2013 and January 2016 and former director of the official channel Ávila TV) and Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein, former director of International Relations of the Presidency of Venezuela, former Venezuelan ambassador to Nicaragua, former general director of the International Relations Office of the Ministry of Culture, columnist in Misión Verdad and usual commentator as international analyst in Sputnik Mundo, which also published an interview recounting his Sandinista guerrilla experience in Nicaragua.
Not only does it have staff from Venezuelan government members, but also from outlets deprecated in the English Wikipedia such as Russia Today, Telesur, Sputnik and others. This includes Misión Verdad as well, whose hoaxes include comparing the Venezuelan Green Cross [es] to Syria's White Helmets, claiming that have also they staged false flags incidents during the 2017 protests ([40]).
Let's not forget the examples provided in the previous RfC, such as the misleading map about the presidential crisis. Equally important, though, are other examples of false content that has not been retracted, such as the causes of death of Juan Pablo Pernalete (claiming he was killed captive bolt pistol by the opposition instead of a tear gas canister by security forces [41]) and Fernando Albán (saying that he committed suicide, instead of being killed[42]). Both were the versions provided that the Venezuelan government, and that themselves admitted five years later that they were false.
As its name suggests, VA is a website dedicated to analysis, not news. With its lack of neutrality, it means that it is no better than a blog and that it does not belong to Wikipedia. --NoonIcarus (talk) 20:04, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
The three articles you linked don't report any falsehoods. The map is not even "misleading" as it pertains to the latest government recognized by each country. The article that discusses Pernalete discusses in great details the theories the two versions of his death and doesn't take a position either way, and the article on alban merely reports what the authorities are saying, with attribution of these claims to the Venezuelan Attorney General. Mottezen (talk) 20:49, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
  1. Funding from GOV: This was 2007 and the context was that this occurred during its founding.
  2. Cazadores article: Many of the statements here are guilt by association arguments (i.e. VA staff previously were part of the government/media org). Ok, but why did they leave such organizations and instead join VA? Were they upset with something? Did they not support the direction though still supported certain ideals. This has nothing to do with reliability. You also attempt this guilt by association by making the false equivalence between Misión Verdad and Venezuelanalysis (Venezuelanalysis hasn't made any statements about the "Green Cross")
  3. "Misleading map": Some may argue that "silence is complicity", meaning that those who didn't recognize Guaidó (including neutral nations) were instead recognizing Maduro. Others (including Wikipedia) took a more nuanced approach regarding recognition (Guaidó, National Assembly, neutrality, Maduro or no statement). So definitions on recognition (as it was during the entire presidential crisis) may be up to interpretation.
  4. Retractions: In their thousands of articles, maybe they overlooked retracting articles on incidents that occurred five years prior to when information was clarified?
As Mottezen said, you have not provided any falsehoods that can be attributed to Venezuelanalysis. WMrapids (talk) 05:50, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Option 3: I don’t see what is changed since the last RFC. It is reliable for reporting the statements of the Venezuelan government and its close allies, so should not be deprecated. Most of its content is opinion or commentary, which is neither reliable, nor noteworthy. Its news content is largely secondhand, often from unreliable sources; when the original source is reliable, we should use that instead. BobFromBrockley (talk) 00:09, 12 October 2023 (UTC) [typo corrected 16 Oct]
    @Bobfrombrockley: What has changed since the last RfC is that virtually all usage of Venezuelanalysis has been removed (see my edit above). Despite its entry saying that "its claims should be attributed", the attributed claims have been removed as well. If we determine this is "additional conditions" material, we can also note that opinion and commentary should be attributed. It is strange that with the La Patilla RfC you supported "additional considerations" in similar circumstances. Do you see any unreliable information from Venezuelanalysis? Again, all of this is not to illustrate a point, but you made a similar argument in a previous RfC though you have a different decision with this particular case. WMrapids (talk) 06:03, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
Thanks WMrapids. Have you got examples of Venezuelanalysis being removed incorrectly? As a result of the last RfC, I looked at some of its usages and found that in some cases it was being used appropriately but in others it wasn't and removed it. For example, it was second hand reporting from either more reliable sources (in which case I replaced with original) or from unreliable sources (in which case I removed and/or tagged). In other cases, opinion pieces were being used as facts, so I removed or added better source tagging. Perhaps other editors were more slapdash in removing a generally unreliable source for material where it might have been appropriate, in which case it would be fine to review those instances or bring them here for discussion, but it doesn't change the basic finding of general unreliability. Re the La Patilla comparison, I don't think they're comparable. La Patilla is staffed by journalists. It reports stuff. It reports stuff that we wouldn't know if we only used government press releases. Whereas Venezuelanalysis is staffed by activists and its original content is not based on actual reporting. Where elements of La Patilla's output are comparable to Venezuelanalysis' (the aggregation), I argued that this should be considered unreliable. Hope this answers your questions. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:04, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
@Bobfrombrockley: I appreciate the thorough response. While you say that they are staffed by "activists", the same could be said by La Patilla due to their extreme bias as well. However, bias does not affect reliability and we have discussed this before. I'm not saying that Venezuelanalysis is generally reliable at all either, just that they may be applicable in certain situations with proper attribution. That is why I chose "additional considerations" since it seems like if it were determined to be anything less, users would simply remove any trace from the project entirely (especially since the WP:RSP entry already suggests use with attribution and it is still being removed). What do you think about this? WMrapids (talk) 14:57, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
When I say "activists" I don't mean "biased"; I mean lacking in any kind of journalistic training or expertise, lacking in normal news-based editorial procedures. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:45, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
If your position regarding reliability is the same as La Patilla, per the previous RfC, then you should agree that the outlet must be considered unreliable or be deprecated. --NoonIcarus (talk) 10:56, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Option 2: I'm glad this RFC was made. I think the previous RFC missed the mark.
Sure, it has received money from the Venezuelan government in the past. Is that an argument for deprecation? There are an awful lot of outlets cited on Wikipedia that have received money from western governments. Should they be deprecated? Of course not.
Sure, they are consistently and predictably biased in certain ways. So is every single "reliable source", without exception. CNN is biased in favor of its advertisers, and against those who criticize its advertisers. The WSJ is biased in favor of wealthy people and against things that disproportionately benefit the working class. Bellingcat is biased in the sense that it receives funding from western governments, and then conducts investigations into those governments' adversaries, while never investigating their benefactors. And all three of these outlets are biased in favor of the USA and against the USA's "adversaries". Should those three outlets be deprecated? Of course not.
Sure, they've released a handful of reports that contained inaccuracies. Find me an outlet that hasn't published misleading information. I'm old enough to remember the Iraq-WMD hoax, which was perpetuated by essentially every mainstream American outlet, due to a combination of pro-US government bias and uncritical credulity. The pro-government disinformation spread, knowingly or unwittingly, by US-based outlets, led to the Iraq invasion, which in turn led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. The lesson there isn't that the NYT & others are unreliable. The lesson is that they are biased, and will err on the side of their biases when the fog of propaganda gets too thick to parse.
Sure, they employ some people who've worked for the Venezuelan government. Has anyone taken a look at the career backgrounds of many contributors to US-based "reliable sources"? NBC, CBS, CNN, and others have so many FBI, CIA, and DOD employees on their payroll that I can't keep track of them all. Does that mean we should deprecate those outlets? Of course not.
Additional considerations apply, and editors should take care to understand the context and potential bias of this source before using it. The same should be said for literally every other source. Is it the best source out there on Venezuelan issues? No, but when Wikipedia already suffers from rampant systemic bias, and many Latin American political issues are primarily presented on Wikipedia from the perspective of the affluent Anglo-American press, allowing the use of this source is a no brainer. Of course Venezuelanalysis should not be deprecated. Philomathes2357 (talk) 18:41, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
The source wasn't deprecated in the previous RFC - that would have been #4. The consensus conclusion was #3. Banks Irk (talk) 18:54, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
Ah, thanks for correcting me. Indeed, the previous conclusion was #3, not #4. I think all of my arguments are substantively the same - and as a previous editor noted, there has been a multi-year move to remove Venezuelanalysis, so it is, in practice, treated as a deprecated source. Philomathes2357 (talk) 18:57, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
Your claim about Bellingcat here is easily demonstrably incorrect, as well as whataboutery. The "bias is not unreliability" mantra is a strawman argument as the issue with VA is not bias but distortion. BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:43, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
I wanted to respond to this before and other editors already have, but I think it's important that I leave my comment. Unfortunately, this is a false equivalency between Western media as a whole an Venezuelanalysis, something that is actually common when discussing these issues.
Taking as an example the US invasion of Iraq (which has happened over 20 years ago now and sources have corrected their stances), and comparing to an outlet affiliated with the Venezuelan government simply does not hold water. A specific historical event is not the same as a PR campaign that has continued over the years. If you feel that the reliability of any of those sources should be questioned, you're free start a new RfC.
Possibly the best example is the consistent cheerleading of the Bolivarian missions, including but not limited to Robinson ([43][44][45]), Vivienda ([46][47]) and Barrio Adentro ([48][49][50]). None of their articles make any mention of their negative aspects, such as corruption, unsustainability and lack of progress. After all the years when they were published, they have not done it and won't either simply because their editorial line is uncritical. --NoonIcarus (talk) 22:29, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Bad RFC; WP:RFCBEFORE Andre🚐 19:26, 12 October 2023 (UTC) I'm coming back here to say that I'll go along with Option 4 or 3 for this source after reading SandyGeorgia's take on it. I believe we have enough good sources that we can afford to be selective when it comes to dicey sources. It doesn't take much for me to see the problem with this source. Given the RFC felt premature but it's proceeding, here is where I am landing. Andre🚐 23:43, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
The lesson there isn't that the NYT & others are unreliable. The lesson is that they are biased, No, the lesson is that they make errors and are susceptible to errors (or intentional lies/propaganda) Andre🚐 19:27, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
What you say is also true. They make errors, and are susceptible to unintentionally amplifying lies and propaganda. However, the NYT has never, to my knowledge, used their front page to accidentally push Ugandan state propaganda, or Bolivian state propaganda, or Thai state propaganda. When the NYT (and others, they're a placeholder) publishes propaganda, it just so happens to be propaganda that is supportive of the US and its allies, and critical of the US government's adversaries. That is a demonstration of latent bias.
Even though these outlets got stories like Iraq/WMD catastrophically wrong, with devastating real-world consequences, they are still reliable sources generally speaking. I read the NYT all the time. My only point in bringing this up is that outlets like Venezuelanalysis, which exist outside the mainstream, affluent Anglo-American bubble, are held to an absurdly high standard in comparison to the standards we typically apply to outlets like the NYT, CNN, WSJ, NBC, BBC, PBS, and so on. The criticisms, that Venezuelanalysis has a generally (but not consistently) pro-government bent, has previously received funding from the government, and has made errors, are all criticisms that can be equally applied to outlets held in high esteem by Wikipedians. I'd submit that this is, in part, due to systemic bias. Philomathes2357 (talk) 20:02, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
It's a reasonable, good faith discussion, but I will use Occam's razor to say that it's much simpler. NYT is obviously reliable, as you say, even though they have occasional errors or latent biases (for the sake of the argument I will grant without getting into whether NYT has ever inadvertently pushed Ugandan propaganda). When it comes to outlets like Venezualanalysis - I don't know if they are reliable or not. But there's a reason why we have high standards for reliability when it comes to state-affiliated media. The bottom line is that we have to determine whether Venezualanalysis has a high standard for editorial oversight, fact-checking, a la WP:NEWSORG. It is not presumed to. While there might be a bit of an equivalency you might seek to make on the question of other outlets are reliable, WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS isn't the discussion. The question is whether Venezuelanalysis is reliable on its own merits. Andre🚐 22:07, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
Fair enough. I do think the broader point I've made above is relevant, but it's good to refocus the conversation on Venezuelanalysis. Here's my final thoughts on this unless a new avenue of dialogue opens up:
Per WMRapids' comment, citations of Venezuelanalysis have been "methodically removed", from 252 to 9. So it's been, practically speaking, deprecated as a source. I also see other folks voting "option 4". I'm troubled by that.
I'd readily concede to your point that Venezuelanalysis is presumably not a bastion of journalistic rigor. Probably much less rigorous than say, the NYT. But it's not a fake news propaganda outlet as some have suggested, nor is it one of those outlets that "somehow" never takes issue with anything its patron government does, like, say, Bellingcat.
Its aforementioned disagreements with the Venezuelan state suggest a level of ideological independence from the government, and it supposedly no longer takes government funds. Its opinions should always be attributed, and never belong in Wikivoice, I'll say that much. But as you know, I'm not much of a fan of having government-funded political opinions in Wikivoice, period.
I maintain that it includes noteworthy information about the politics of Venezuela and the broader region that might not be presented in other sources. If we had an embarrassment of riches in terms of good, high-quality on-the-ground analysis of Venezuelan politics, perhaps the conversation would be slightly different. But as it stands, I think dismissing the source would be a disservice to our encyclopedic coverage of Venezuela, despite its flaws. That's why I've voted "additional considerations apply", and I hope other editors will join me in that vote. Philomathes2357 (talk) 01:38, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Bellingcat has published plenty of articles about the US. A New Platform Maps US Police Violence Against Protesters, American-Made Bomb Used in Airstrike on Yemen Wedding etc. 93.72.49.123 (talk) 11:55, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
@Philomathes2357: You can see more on how this source and others were systematically removed in my edit above. Again, no sympathy for potential misinformation at all (which is why we are all here), but when readers are prevented from even having access to attributed information, at best it is assuming the reader is ignorant and at worst it is censorship. WMrapids (talk) 05:26, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Option 4: Deprecate
"Venezuela Analysis" is a highly unreliable source. From its wikipedia page, it is described as a news outlet that supports the Maduro regime and its policies.
A quick glance at that site makes it clear that it is a highly politicized and conspiratorial network, and that its not an outlet that attempts to produce real news. This source should not be used at all, since it is a fake news outlet focused on generating pro-Maduro propaganda. This website is no different from an unreliable, self-published source.Shadowwarrior8 (talk) 16:08, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
@Mottezen: The Venezuelan Confederation of Israelite Associations (CAIV) identified Venezuelanalysis as one of the outlets that republished "distorted news, omissions and false accusations" about Israel from Iranian media, especially from HispanTV, since at least 2013 (see WP:RSN/Archive 265#RfC: HispanTV for more details).
Since you're the only editor supporting Option 1 for the time being, it would be good if you provided arguments for clasifying VA under said option or that you reconsider your vote. --NoonIcarus (talk) 10:20, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
I’d like to see the said article that were republished. I wouldn’t trust the CAIV for telling me Venezuelanalysis published false information. CAIV is a non-notable organisation that doesn’t even have a Wikipedia article, and its website is inactive since the pandemic. Why do you believe they are an authority on what is false or true?
If you read the arguments for option 2, it sounds like they are advocating for option 1, because biased sources can still have a stellar record for reporting facts, and opinion articles need to be attributed either way. Mottezen (talk) 20:05, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
If a Jewish association in the country is not relevant for an issue such as Antisemitism in Venezuela, I frankly don't know what is and what you would expect, particularly if you're using the current existance of an article in the English Wikipedia as a factor for notability (at any rate the organization meets WP:GNG, which means an article could be created at any moment regardless). --NoonIcarus (talk) 11:53, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
Jewish associations vary in their interpretations of antisemitism (case of point: IJV and the Board of Deputies). Coalitions that are inactive tend to be unreliable. Mottezen (talk) 04:50, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
Sounds more like a personal opinion, but ok. --NoonIcarus (talk) 11:12, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
New example added at bottom of RFC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:26, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Option 3 or 4: at least a 3, but there is a solid argument for 4, deprecation, because they routinely reprint content labeled as news from WP:TELESUR, a deprecated source and a chavista propaganda outlet,[51] and they do not retract or correct factual errors as time evolves and more information comes to light (see points 1 and 3 below).

  1. Telesur is widely acknowledged as Venezuelan propaganda and rightfully deprecated on Wikipedia for printing false information. Venezuelanalysis reprints Telesur articles as news, not opinion (some of these articles are outright propaganda and misrepresentations, aka lies). A few samples (there is more): [52] [53] [54] In one case, a blatant misrepresentation based on Telesur propaganda, reprinted at Venezuelanalysis.com, was used to introduce a BLP vio into Wikipedia at Nelson Bocaranda (using primary and UNDUE sources[55] to parrot the Telesur lie).[56] Lessening our restrictions on Venezuelanalysis.com means more Telesur propaganda is likely to also be reflected on Wikipedia; it's not surprising they don't indicate editorial oversight or enjoy a reputation for fact-checking, when they parrot Telesur.
  2. Nothing has changed since the last RFC. The map issue is misrepresented in some statements above: for example, that Switzerland and other countries were neutral was not "highly contested at the time" (noting also that Switzerland imposed sanctions on Maduro's government while agreeing to represent the US after it closed its Caracas embassy, so some mumbo-jumbo has to occur to represent via a map they support the Maduro government). Where do we draw the line between blatant lies and simple biased slanting? A good example of that is given in their coverage of the ...
  3. 2019 Venezuelan blackouts. It's one thing to parrot with bias the chavismo claim that the blackouts were caused by a cyberattack, as they did when the blackouts began in 2019.[57] [58] Presenting only one side's allegations is just bias, which is separate from reliability. But years later, repeating the same bias becomes a matter of absent editorial oversight or fact checking; it's quite another matter to still be parroting the chavismo stance in 2022, with narry a mention of mainstream facts, when not a scintilla of evidence to back the government claims has surfaced, and all unbiased sources acknowledge the causes of the blackouts. Sticking the word "alleged" in front of a blatantly false claim isn't cover for propagating this lie many years after the fact, when more information is known.[59] An entire book on the matter was published by a New York Times journalist.
  4. Looking at the about page (and earlier iterations of it at archive.org) is always a first stop when evaluating reliability. Either they have never had a managing editor, or they don't want us to know who it is. Volunteers working around the world do not equate to "editorial oversight", and the current and all historical archives of their about page speak to staff (many of whom have no journalistic credentials), but not editorial oversight. As one example, I noticed multiple news articles written by Paul Dobson, a person with no journalistic training but an interest in Venezuela and seems to be this guy (which that website passes off as a journalist in spite of his Venezuelanalysis bio). I find nothing on their about page which speaks to fact checking or editorial oversight, rather rotating staff who have an interest in promoting chavismo-- that is, the better description of the website is a blog.

So, for now I'm at a 3+; if others produce more examples of spreading Telesur propaganda as news, then please consider me a 4, deprecate. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:14, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

  1. This can be combatted in a similar conclusion to the La Patilla RfC; simply don't reproduce things source from deprecated sources and attribute properly.
  2. There are multiple issues with the map that deserve context. Switzerland could still sanction a government and still recognize it (sanctions from them began in 2018, prior to the presidential crisis).
  3. Again, no proof of any mistruths. VA literally writes "The Caribbean nation’s power generation and distribution infrastructure has suffered from a lack of maintenance, corruption and a brain drain, with the issues heavily compounded by wide-reaching US sanctions." So besides the debatable last portion, VA acknowledges corruption and brain drain in Venezuela's electrical management, something you would hardly hear from a propaganda outlet.
  4. Plenty of sources have unclear management. La Patilla, for instance, doesn’t even have an "about" page, yet you quickly overlooked that in their RfC and provided the excuse that it was for "safety".
WMrapids (talk) 21:16, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
@SandyGeorgia: Venezuelanalysis has a whole category dedicated to Telesur: TeleSUR Archives. Some of its articles include the following:
Collapsing links to prevent cramming
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
This includes but is not limited to the conspiracy theory that the 2019 nationwide blackouts were caused by a sabotage ([86]), something debunked by journalists and experts alike ([87]), as well as claims of university enrollment raising 294% ([88]), something also dismissed by fack checkers. Pinging @Mottezen:, who also asked for examples of false information. --NoonIcarus (talk) 10:49, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
I have similarly found republications from Misión Verdad: [89][90][91][92][93][94]. --NoonIcarus (talk) 11:08, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for the examples; this one is incredibly troubliing, as the novice reader is unlikely to understand how that game is played in Venezuela, as it reminds of the sudden naming of people responsible for the murder of Fernando Albán years after the fact; naming some lowly peons responsible after years of denial can help assure the higher-ups in the Maduro administration are not charged with crimes against humanity. I wonder what innocent unnamed person paid the price in the blackout arrest. I wonder if Venezuelanalysis has ever corrected, retracted or restated anything about that arrest report? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:08, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
@SandyGeorgia and NoonIcarus: And? With La Patilla, you two both overlooked the usage of Breitbart, Epoch Times and other far-right conspiracy articles reposted by La Patilla. If we are going to go about the same way, we can just note not to use reposts of deprecated sources as we have done with La Patilla and to use the original source if VA is performing a repost. Your decisions appear more based on bias/ideology than based on reliability. WMrapids (talk) 12:05, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
There are numerous differences between the reliability analysis of La Patilla and Venezuelanalysis.
One is Venezuelanalysis extensively using Telesur propaganda for its reporting of Venezuelan news (and it does little else) compared to the allegations in the La Patilla RFC about reprints of almost exclusively info unrelated to its Venezuela coverage (eg COVID). The first alleged reprint I checked in that overly long and bludgeoned discussion that was related to Venezuela had been removed by La Patilla within a day or two, demonstrating the presence of editorial oversight. Aggregated coverage from La Patilla is easily separated from its reporting on Venezuela and no instance of their reporting of Venezuela news was unreliable; Venezuelanalysis is Venezuelan news, and even when they don't directly reprint from Telesur, they report the same propaganda (eg the blackouts). Breitbart and Epoch Times aren't focused on Venezuela; Telesur and Venezuelanalysis are, so ignoring their reprints means ... ignoring them almost entirely, eg, unreliable.
The discussion of La Patilla and other outlets censored in Venezuela having no "About Us" page similarly doesn't even apply to Venezuelanalysis, which is not censored in Venezuela, for obvious reasons: it is pro-chavismo by definition from its outset, and its reporters have not been imprisoned or had to flee the country. A potential reason Venezuelanalaysis doesn't mention editorial oversight is because of the connection between Wilpert and his wife's position with chavismo; that is, obfuscating information for reasons unrelated to personal harm likely to come to reporters from other outlets who criticize the government.
Please avoid turning another RFC into another unreadable mess, and don't bludgeon by distorting and misrepresenting what I or anyone else said on a different RFC with entirely different circumstances and then lacing your comments with aspersions; I most certainly did not "overlook" the aggregated issue, rather I addressed it explicitly. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:54, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
The example that you provided is misleading. La Patilla still has the same article posted, though they hid the mention of Breitbart in the headline. Recognizing that this isn’t a discussion about La Patilla, it still doesn't change how you and NoonIcarus have different opinions are similar discussions. NoonIcarus was one of the only users to find La Patilla "generally reliable" and they now want to deprecate Venezuelanalysis after already leading a crusade to remove it from the project entirely (even removing some content against previous consensus suggestions). I won’t comment further on this to avoid blodgeoning, though the behavior of you two should be on the record for other users. WMrapids (talk) 16:20, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
Well perhaps you should have brought that information forward on that RFC, not this one. (For that matter, maybe you did, and it was lost among your bludgeoning). And no, La Patilla did not hide the Breitbart, as I can see it clearly in the link you provide. Stop the aspersions that serve only to muddy another RFC; focus on content. I retain my view that Venezuelanalysis is only marginally different from Telesur outright propaganda; I remain at 3+ but the false information about increasing university enrollment that NoonIcarus pointed out is also a concern. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:30, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
Please kindly notice that my main argument for this RfC has not been based in the use of deprecated sources (which at this point I think is implicit and already demonstrated), but rather the lack of editorial independence of Venezuelanalysis, as well as several and consistent concerns by editors throughout the years, and I focused in providing only news articles, leaving aside opinion ones that were included in the other RfC. In La Patilla's RfC I commented how many of the examples were uncontroversial and even unrelated (crediting Breitbart for images as an example of republishing content), being an example of WP:SOURCECOUNTING, but there are also important differences between both outlets as Sandy commented.
Now, since you brought it up, I think it is important to reassure the noticeboard that the opening of this RfC is unrelated to the outcome of La Patilla's RfC, which was different to your preferred one, that you disputed, and is about a Venezuelan source too. --NoonIcarus (talk) 11:44, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
The VenezuelaAnalysis link you allege discusses the 2019 blackout is dated from 2017. And the 294% increase in university admissions is over 14 years, so this figure does not strain credulity. China experienced a similar growth in the number of university students over the same period. Plus, you have not provided a link that debunks this claim. Mottezen (talk) 02:16, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
Separately from what NoonIcarus presents, the article where they repeat the chavista propaganda blackout conspiracy theory that I present is 2022, with an "alleged" stuck on for cover. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:43, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
You will note that that the same article also says the following 4 paragraphs above: The Caribbean nation’s power generation and distribution infrastructure has suffered from a lack of maintenance, corruption and a brain drain, with the issues heavily compounded by wide-reaching US sanctions. This is verbatim the main explanation of the 2019 blackouts in our wikipedia article on the subject, presented as a plain hard fact by VenezuelaAnalysis in each of their articles I saw on the subject.
And the full sentence you are referring to is: In early 2019, Venezuela suffered a string of widespread blackouts that covered virtually all of its territory following alleged terrorist attacks. (external links in original, each linking to articles about the governments allegations of the attacks.) Each time the "attacks on electricity generation" claims are relayed by VenezuelaAnalysis, it is always attributed to the government of Venezuela, or simply with an with an "alleged" to differentiate it from the proven facts. Mottezen (talk) 04:29, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
See BobFromBrockley post above at 11:08, 17 October 2023 demonstrating how reliable sources report compared to Venanalysis; it's the same thing. They repeat the conspiracy theory unnecessarily, for which there is zero credible evidence, but try to dress it up by sticking an alleged on it. This is four years after the fact; everyone knows better by now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:38, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
It’s very revealing that there is no answer to my argument m. It’s an admission option 1 is right Mottezen (talk) 03:17, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
New example of false information added at the bottom of this RFC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:15, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Bad RfC/Keep previous result (or option 4) this seems like another rushed RfC argued on the basis of misuse of the description of source in a specific article and on a contested (?) result in a different RfC. Per others this source is clearly troubling. It produces or reproduces what other pro-Venezuelan government sources like Correo del Orinoco, Telesur to maintain the government narrative [95] and it is clearly highly opinionated. --ReyHahn (talk) 15:28, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
    This is a masterful tour through the interconnected outlets for Venezuelan propaganda, showing the links between Venezuelanalysis and the rest of the propaganda network; what a pity it's not in English. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:46, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
    Sandy, NoonIcarus had already posted this "masterful tour" and, as said above, is an article that plainly paints with a brush of guilt by association. We know that VA has former government staff and reposts some Venezuelan government articles. But that doesn't make VA directly unreliable, it makes the specific reposts unreliable and shows a bias, which isn't related to reliability (just using your previous reasoning).
    ReyHahn, whether or not it "reproduces what other pro-Venezuelan government sources" say or is "highly opinionated", it does not make it unreliable. In your "Option 2" choice for La Patilla, you said "some important examples of unreliable behaviour have been brought here but a few examples are not sufficient to make it a perennial or deprecated source". There haven't been any secondary sources providing proof of VA being unreliable (though its reposts may be questionable). You said La Patilla was "independent" even though its founder and leader Alberto Federico Ravell was part of the Juan Guaidó government and it has been widely been described as an opposition outlet. You also said that La Patilla "published many articles about government and opposition scandals". Well, guess what? So has Venezuelanalysis! So your argument that VA is "pro-government" and thus unreliable is hypocritical.WMrapids (talk) 04:13, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
    Just if I might drop in, English audiences might be familiar with the criminalization of demonstrators and opposition leaders, with terms such as "fascists" ([96][97][98]) or "terrorists" ([99]), similar to the tone used by right-wing outlets against groups such as antifa. --NoonIcarus (talk) 23:28, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
    Those are opinion articles while the last article clearly attributes the claim to the government. Meanwhile your "Option 1" source La Patilla writes that "The Maduro regime subscribed to the interests of the Hamas terrorist group" after he only mentioned the difficulties faced by Palestinians, misattributing the EFE source. It has promoted the term "terrorist" towards Maduro in multiple instances, especially recently.[100][101][102][103] I'm not here to defend Maduro at all or continue past arguments, but you have some apparent double standards when determining source reliability. WMrapids (talk) 08:01, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Option 4: Just another propaganda & fake news outlet serving the interests of a dictatorship. Tradediatalk 19:20, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Option 2 per widespread arguments in the La Patilla RfC where editors argued that in instances where La Patilla was aggregating content, editors should not use any aggregated content and should evaluate original sources and use those if reliable. That Venezuelanalysis has reprinted Telesur can be treated in the same manner in this situation. I don’t find any other arguments strong enough for marking the source as unreliable or deprecation. There are accusations of bias towards the Venezuelan government’s perspective due to funding but I don’t see how those currently hold water given that there has been no evidence presented that Venezuela continues to fund Venezuelanalysis. TarnishedPathtalk 05:54, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
    Bingo - a source isn't unreliable because it reposts content that Wikipedians dislike. We could simply use VA's original articles, and treat the articles from deprecated sources as originating from the deprecated source, not VA. There's ample precedent for this. I also don't see how those funding arguments hold water given the fact that we regularly cite news outlets funded in whole or in part by governments, including multiple state-owned media outlets from the west. Philomathes2357 (talk) 20:28, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
    Please take a look above for examples of misleading or false content. --NoonIcarus (talk) 00:14, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
    I've seen them. My response would be that one can find examples of misleading or false content in every reliable source. Especially misleading content. VA is no different. But there is also a lot of useful information published there, that may not be widely available elsewhere in the English language press, and, especially given Wikipedia's ongoing problem with underrepresenting the points of view of people in the Global South, it would be a shame to "throw out the baby with the bathwater" and deprecate the source based on some cherry-picked misleading or potentially false stories.
    Imagine if we had deprecated the NYT post-Iraq invasion? We certainly could have listed a lot of misleading and false reports, which had devastating real-life consequences, particularly those by Judith Miller - at least as many misleading reports as have been listed in this RFC. But deprecating NYT would have been a grave mistake, because we would have missed out on all the useful information that they publish. I'm not suggesting that NYT and VA are equivalent, but I am suggesting that the same logic necessitates, at minimum, voting "option 3" instead of "option 4". Philomathes2357 (talk) 01:45, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
    Be careful, the examples of "false content" provided above are not actually false content. In most of the examples, VenezuelaAnalysis was ont reporting statements from government official, and it's true they said those things. Not one false statement found that was reported as fact by VenezuelaAnalysis. Mottezen (talk) 06:50, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
    Again this is the work that we expect editors to do when citing sources. If a sources is quoting a government official, make it clear that the quote that is being used is a quote of a government official and not the article voice. I think this goes back to themes in my bolded vote. TarnishedPathtalk 11:24, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
    Hmm. What's your reaction to Mottezen's assertion here, @NoonIcarus? Philomathes2357 (talk) 01:51, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
My point still stands my point still stands since there are many examples of the publication of false content from an editorial voice, and not only citing government officials: Pernalete's and Albán's killings, the reasons for blackouts, the university enrollment rate, and so on, and that's without going into misleading reporting and omissions, such as labelling the opposition as "fascists" or "terrorists", or offering uncritical comment to government policies, respectively. VA's description by independent sources leaves much to be desired, and this position has been shared by editors in Wikipedia since at least 2010. --NoonIcarus (talk) 17:02, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
Please cite me examples of the publication of false content from an editorial voice published by VenezuelaAnalysis. I have yet to find any such examples. Read above how purported examples misrepresented VA articles. Mottezen (talk) 03:14, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
Take a look again at the examples I have provided above, or those provided below by SandyGeorgia. --NoonIcarus (talk) 00:30, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
  • PROPOSAL TO CLOSE Having taking the position that a new RFC was unwarranted given the dearth of actual citations to the source, it is probably inappropriate for me to close. But, after almost two weeks of discussion which has become largely repetitive among a handful of combatants, I would conclude that the consensus among the uninvolved, experienced editors who regularly contribute at RSN is the same as the last RFC: #3 bordering on #4. I'd invite any uninvolved experienced editor to close this RFC. Banks Irk (talk) 23:45, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
  • New (2022) example (when does omission become a lie?):
    From News, Venezuela to ‘Rebuild Fellowship’ with Petro Gov’t in Colombia, August 8, 2022
    The alleged participants included former far-right opposition lawmaker Juan Requesens, who was sentenced to 8 years after confessing to having assisted in bringing in the explosive-laden drones used in the attack.
    Overlooking that VA consistently refers to opposition figures like Maria Corina Machado as far right, when unbiased sources don't, this News article states without reservation that Requesens confessed; they say he was an "alleged participant" in what is a disputed plot to begin with, but not that he "allegedly" confessed to bringing in the explosives. Please compare evidence of that "confession" to Wikipedia's reliably sourced account of this "confession". (Other Maduro administration coerced "confessions" covered at this article.) This is another example of how the allowance of Venezuelanalysis as a reliable source would impact BLPs. The author of that News item (a former writer for the deprecated Telesur) also writes this recent item, whose misrepresentations are so extensive that an analysis here would be TLDR and bore everyone to tears. This source lies. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:34, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
    It clearly says "alleged" regarding Requesens and while you do bring up the opposition claiming he was drugged, he did technically confess. Whether that was under duress will probably forever be under debate. Also, taking a look at Maria Corina Machado before her article was recently scrubbed shows that plenty of other reliable sources describe her as "far right", so VA is not too out of line with reliable sources. Finally, more false equivalency between staff of VA and Telesur without a necessary TLDR that would explain any valid concern. WMrapids (talk) 12:40, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
    Requesens shat his pants during that confession. Facts such as that shouldn't be in question at this point. --NoonIcarus (talk) 10:32, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
    I'm sure a lot of people would too if they were captured and accused of attempting to kill a sitting president. As much as I disagree with actions by the Venezuelan government, you using the direct accusations by the opposition and presenting them as "facts ... that shouldn't be in question" shows exactly where your head is at. WMrapids (talk) 06:00, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
    Unless that theory is presented by sources, it is a personal conjecture that has no bearing in the discussion, and even then, I'm sure none of them have this broadcasted in national television. Reliable sources say that Requesens' sphincter loosened after being drugged ([104][105][106]), just to mention a few). VA could have gone with their own theory, but they don't even acknowledge the fact, which fails to provide an accurate picture of the situation and is SandyGeorgia's main point. --NoonIcarus (talk) 12:54, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
    Here is the real quote (from the old version of the article): The alleged participants included former far-right opposition lawmaker Juan Requesens, who was sentenced to 8 years after confessing to having assisted in bringing in the explosive-laden drones used in the attack.
    See the hyperlink?? It redirects to an article which states that:
    Alleged personal testimony implicates both Borges and Requesens, as well as a series of other citizens allegedly involved.
    So the omission of "alleged" here is a mistake, as stated by TFD. If a wikipedia used this to use this article as a source for Requesens confession, the VenezuelaAnalysis article linked in the same sentence of that fact can be used as a reason for reverting that edit. To paint the source as "generally unreliable" based on this mistake would be blowing things way out of proportion. Mottezen (talk) 23:09, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Bobfrombrockley, you provided two examples of how coveraage differs in Venezuelanalysis and rs. Can you point to any differences in the facts reported? Reliability is determined by whether reporting is factual, not which party they happen to endorse. TFD (talk) 14:51, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

I gave you one just above this; they say Requesens confessed, which is so dubious as to be more akin to a falsehood. The way other sources treat the "confession" is at his article. And I disagree with the statement that the placement of the 'alleged' isn't relevant; they say he was an alleged participant; they clearly don't say he 'allegedly' confessed. They present that as fact. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:54, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Closure request;[107] (The Four Deuces, I did not see your new comment when I added the closure request; please let me know if you think I should withdraw it. I suspect that the closure requests are running so far behind that it won't make a difference, and anyone looking here to close won't do so if new comments are still coming in anyway, so I'm inclined to leave it alone, unless you disagree.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:50, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

  • Option 2 According to CBC News, "Officials have released a filmed statement of Requesens that they say shows an admission, but he never appears to confess or mention the attack."[108] Venezuelanalysis incorrectly says he confessed,as SandyGeorgia points out.
In order to address the question, we should a reliable source that assesses the reliability of Venezuelanalysis. As some editors have pointed out, errors of this type occur in all media. It's a matter of expert judgment whether this makes the source unreliable.
In the absence of a reliable source that says Venezuelanalysis is reliable, I cannot support option one. However, I wouldn't support Option 4 either, which would preclude using any articles even ones that met rs for self-publication.
TFD (talk) 01:43, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
I appreciate the acknowledgement, and understand your hesitancy relative to other reliable sources, but in the interest of assuring the extent of inaccuracies in Venezuelanalysis is adequately reflected in the closing statement of this RFC, I note that scores of instances similar to the misrepresentation of the confession exist.
Here's another example: Venezuelanalysis reported on April 22, 2023 that "Albán, an opposition councilman, fell to his death from a tenth-floor window in October 2018." Note the dates in relation to how other sources reported on his death all along, until early May 2023, when chavismo admitted he had been murdered in custody. There is no "reportedly" attached to that Venezuelanalysis sentence, as there are to other statements in the same report. The rest of the paragraph gives the howevers/disclaimers, but nonetheless, the sentence states as fact that he "fell to his death" years after that was known to be a dubious statement, as reported by reliable sources; you can see our reliably sourced account at Fernando Albán for a good sampling of how other sources handled the account all along.
Samples like this abound; the source should never be used for a BLP, and is equally unreliable in its por-chavismo statistical/economic reporting. When the misrepresentations are frequent, systematic, and never withdrawn, they aren't errors like any news outlet; at some point, the preponderance of misrepresentations accumulate to being part of the chavista propaganda network. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:20, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
The article you are referencing is titled Venezuela: Attorney General Launches Probe into Corruption Suspect Custody Death. It is about how the Venezuela government is investigating suspicious deaths of suspects in the custody of SEBIN.
The neutral statement you fished at the bottom of that article is in the same paragraph as the following sentences:
Authorities originally ruled [Alban's death] a suicide. However, the investigation was reopened following pressure from multilateral organizations, including the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and two SEBIN officers were charged with involuntary manslaughter.
To me, this article illustrates VenezuelaAnalysis' commitment to covering the news accurately despite its POV. Mottezen (talk) 23:30, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
Two lowly officers being charged in Venezuela may or may not have any relationship to whoever did whatever really happened, or ordered it done. They don't mention what all reliable sources reported since 2018 (water on his lungs), and they don't mention what chavismo officials claimed it was suicide. Because mentioning those individuals would perhaps not be politic, and maybe Venanalysis cares more about not being censored in Venezuela, like the rest of the press has, than journalistic standards. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:10, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
Or maybe they didn't elaborate more because Alban is not the subject of that article. Mottezen (talk) 00:16, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
There isn't a mention either on how human rights groups, relatives and others criticized that the officers were not indicted with torture or mmurder, but rather with a more lenient charge (involuntary manslaughter). At the end they were sentenced to less than 3 years in prison, contrary to the 10 or 15 years at least they could have faced otherwise, meaning they have already been released. Venezuelanalysis fails to mention any of this, and as such fails to provide an accurate picture of the case. --NoonIcarus (talk) 00:27, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
I emailed VenezuelaAnalysis about this mistake, and they published a correction immediately:
Editor’s note: This article was amended on Nov. 11, 2023 to correct information concerning Requesens’ imprisonment. A previous version stated that he confessed his involvement in the 2018 assassination attempt against Maduro. However, this was asserted by Venezuelan authorities, not publicly disclosed.
Issuing corrections is a signal that a news organization engages in fact-checking and has a reputation for accuracy, per WP:NEWSORG. Mottezen (talk) 02:52, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
Very nice work, and I'm glad that you got them to correct one error, but there are scores to hundreds more just like it. It's a systematic issue, and while picking out the blatant like this one is fairly easy for those who follow reliable sources, it's not necessarily easy for average readers, who may be misled, and getting the less apparent corrected could comprise an entire career.
Since Wikipedia is so high profile, might they have made such a speedy correction to satisfy this discussion and increase their chances at having their reliability viewed more favorably on Wikipedia?
  1. Would you be willing to also ask them why "Alban ... fell to this death", rather than adding the persons who "reported that Alban ... fell to his death"? Or why they left out entirely the mention that other/most sources reported there was water in his lungs when he "fell"?
  2. Would you be willing to ask them to explain in full Venezuelanalysis detail their characterization in this article of Jose Brito ? The Official Journal of the European Union provides some helpful starting places for their research.
  3. If I can also ask you to do the favor of getting them to correct the errors here, that would be helpful.
There's scores more; correcting one error doesn't convince they will do more of same, or continue doing same if they can get more of their "work" spread across Wikipedia. But if you are also successful at getting them to address those three, for starters, I'd be willing to upgrade my previous declaration (3 or 4). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:44, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
It's not enough to just assert there are "scores to hundreds more just like it". You must explain what they get wrong with reliable sources instead of just re-asserting previous arguments. Point 1 and 3 deal with issues discussed earlier in the RfC. For 2, it's unclear what you object to in the characterization of José Brito in that article. In any case, you should email them yourself. Mottezen (talk) 00:54, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
I don't feel a lot will be accomplished on this thread by me adding scores of examples, when I've already been shown correct on several, to the extent of a surprisingly speedy correction when you wrote them. Because of Wikipedia's prominence, it's likely that Venezuelanalysis staff is following this thread. Even if you don't see the problem with the second example, by reading the European Parliament source (which I provide even though it's a primary source, because it's in English and most secondary sources are in Spanish, but say the same thing), that's OK, because Venezuelanalysis editors will know what's wrong with it, and do know how to correct all three of these examples. I'm not changing my stance on VA based on you getting them to correct one blatant error that never should have been written to begin with. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:09, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
A small amendment made more than a year after the article's publication cannot be proof of editorial oversight, unlike other outlets whose corrections are issued in days (or either minutes or hours, in the best cases). Furthermore, the current version still refers to Requesens inaccurately as "far-right". --NoonIcarus (talk) 00:36, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
Yes, this particular example is something that was very well known a very long time ago, and they did nothing until a Wikipedian wrote to them: odd, that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:09, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
Hi @The Four Deuces:. I was meaning to provide descriptions by reliable sources but forgot, too many irons in the fire.
The first thing that I noticed is that barely any reliable sources cite VA, which should be a red flag per WP:USEBYOTHERS. When it was, it has been consistently described as "pro-Chávez" (such as by Financial Times). One of the most interesting ones that I found was at a New York Times critical review of Oliver Stone's South of the Border, where it criticizes that outlet's conflicts of interests where not disclosed when discussing the Llaguno Overpass events, stating that it was set up with donations from the Venezuelan government, affiliations that Mr. Stone does not disclose.
However, I found several descriptions offered by Caracas Chronicles:
  • In its early days, back in 2004 and possibly one of its first post, the editors address this comment directly to Gregory Wilpert: So Greg, please, if you want to have a discussion of income inequality, social exclusion, and privilege, let's have it. I think I can show Chavez has deepened each of those, not with rhetoric, but with statistics. But please don't falsify Venezuela's reality by making claims about race relations that are not only wrong, but destructive.
  • Weeks later, it offers a rather sarcastic description, questioning the site's financement and editorial independence: Venezuelanalysis.com is an editorially independent website produced by individuals who are dedicated to disseminating news and analysis about Venezuela. It is financially dependent upon donations and advertising. Hmmm. I wonder what that means exactly. Who are these donors? Who are these advertisers? are there any advertisers? How much does a Google sponsored link cost anyway? Who pays? And how come an “editorially independent website” has a links section with seven pro-Chavez links and not a single voice on the other side?
  • Again, months later the same year, VA is described as being part of Chávez' "delusional servants" when criticizing the presidency's political detentions, saying: You can find some by lifting the rocks in haunts such as Venezuelanalysis.com or Le Monde Diplomatique. How about the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)? [...] They are all are marked by a common denominator: an inability, or unwillingness, to conduct solid, quantititative analysis to support their ideals. And so these princes and princesses of the proletariat market and sell their flim-flam dreams from far away, with no concept of practical realities inherent in an economy they completely disregard. While the poor, whose numbers have escalated in the past five years of the Chavez administration, are left with no option but to buy in, in exchange for dole. And tears when hunger is at the doorstep.
  • Years later, in 2010, Caracas Chronicles describes VA and Wilpert as "government apologists", pointing out to false claims about the Llaguno Overpass events: But Wilpert is misinformed. Not only were there plenty of National Guard troops around Miraflores that day, but they were actually deployed, en masse, on Baralt Avenue. They sat there all afternoon, watching a four-hour gun battle and did nothing to stop it. Which brings new credence to reports that Chávez and his cabinet had discussed deploying the Bolivarian Circles in conjunction with the National Guard four days before the march.
We should bear in mind that Caracas Chronicles, specially in its early years, has had a left-wing, albeit critical, editorial line.
Last but not least, we have the Portales de la mentira report, republished by media outlets such as Efecto Cocuyo, El Estímulo, and Alberto News. As mentioned above, it puts VA's reliability into question.
Please let us know if these descriptions would make you reconsider your vote. Kind regards and best wishes, --NoonIcarus (talk) 18:36, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
Political bias and reliability are two separate issues. There is nothing in policy that says sources written by people who do not support U.S. foreign policy or capitalism are unacceptable. Ownership or support of a publication is also irrelevant. The Times is owned by Rupert Murdoch, al Jazeera is supported by @atar and NBC was owned by a defence contractor.
Also, analysis in news media is unreliable per policy.
I don't think the sources you provided qualify as experts.
I checked one of the complaints in the article by Effecto Cocuyo you provided. It accuses South Front of spreading Russian disinformation by falsely claiming that the U.S. diverted $601 million of Venezuelan funds to the border wall with Mexico. In fact, the article in South Front did not make this claim: it reported what a Univision article had claimed. Univision actually made this claim in an article written by its senior editor, David C. Adams.[109]
Univision is a respected source.[110] But if you think running this type of story merits banning a publication, you should start with Univision, which it probably used in Wikipedia far more frequently.
I will however change my vote to unreliable. That means that the only articles we should use are ones that would be considered reliable if they were self-published. TFD (talk) 21:27, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm well aware of what you're saying. I wanted to bring the attention both to the issue of editorial independence and of reliability (in this case, regarding the 2002 Venezuelan coup attempt). --NoonIcarus (talk) 02:52, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Al-Mayadeen

Latest comment: 11 months ago43 comments18 people in discussion

I recently removed this article "False claims on alleged 'Kfar Aza massacre' now on Wikipedia" from the Kfar Aza massacre article because I thought that it was frankly drivel. It seems to be propaganda that denies the massacre actually happened in the first place, which I don't think any RS are disputing, and cited deprecated sources like The Grayzone as evidence. It has been previously discussed once before here in 2015 Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 196, but that was largely about their Arabic language coverage. I get the impression reading the Al-Mayadeen article that their pro Syria govt/Hezbollah bias makes them a wholly unsuitable source to use on Wikipedia, except to report the official views of those factions.english.almayadeen.net     shows that they are currently used 82 times. Hemiauchenia (talk) 06:14, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

almayadeen.net     shows 187 uses. Hemiauchenia (talk) 05:12, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
Agreed, I think they should be classified as Generally Unreliable
  1. They promotes the US bioweapons in Ukraine conspiracy theory [111]
  2. Their owners are anonymous and it's suspected that it's funded by Iran and Hezbollah [112]
  3. They said themselves that the Palestinian "cause" would be their centerpiece, so they are unlikely to provide reliable coverage of the region [113]
Alaexis¿question? 07:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
"Al-Mayadeen" is a fake news, conspiratorial outlet, and it should be deprecated.
Check its wikipedia page and its "Ownership" section which reveals its funding. "Al-Mayadeen" outlet's owner is anonymous. The outlet has also been described as a joint Iranian-Assadist propaganda project.[1]
In news reporting, "Al-Mayadeen" outlet is explicitly pro-Assad, pro-Iran and pro-Russia. That website has a pattern of promoting conspiracy theories of outlets like Grayzone, Sputnik, PressTV, SANA, etc.
In Syria, it is a vehement opponent of Syrian opposition, dehumanises the Free Syrian Army as "terrorists" and labels Assad regime's indiscriminate bombardment operations as "cleansing".[2] It is strongly pro-Russia and describes the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a "special operation to demilitarize and "denazify" Ukraine" and literally labelled the Zelensky government in Ukraine as a "Nazi regime".
Its clear that this outlet is nothing but a propaganda venture that doesnt have basic journalistic standards or even care about producing real news.

Shadowwarrior8 (talk) 12:42, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "'Anti-Al Jazeera' channel Al Mayadeen goes on air". France 24. 12 June 2012. Retrieved 6 July 2012.
  2. ^ "Executive Summary" (PDF). Syria Cyber Watch. 25 November 2012. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 December 2012. Retrieved 6 December 2012.

RFC: Al-Mayadeen

The result of the discussion was a clear consensus to deprecate Al-Mayadeen (option 4). Some editors believe it publishes lies or misrepresents sources, some describe it as propaganda. There were some editors who considered generally unreliable (option 3) an acceptable outcome, however those editors seemed generally fine with deprecation. The lone remaining dissenter's arguments were effectively rebutted. (non-admin closure) —siroχo 04:01, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

What is the reliability of Al-Mayadeen

  • 1. Generally reliable
  • 2. Unclear/special considerations apply
  • 3. Generally unreliable
  • 4. Deprecate

Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:17, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Responses (Al-Mayadeen)

I have explained the overtly unreliable nature of this fake news-outlet in my previous comment above the RfC section. Shadowwarrior8 (talk) 19:34, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
It's frankly depressing to see how giddy editors are to deprecate non-Western sources. Systemic bias hard at work, in my view. Al-Mayadeen is a widely-used source of information in the Arab world, with reporters in "most Arab countries" per our own article. Much of their staff consists of former Al Jazeera employees. Yes, they have a bias, which they lay out in detail in their "About us" section. It would be nice if other outlets followed suit, and dropped the ludicrous self-serving pretense that they're conducting "objective" journalism.
If we carry on like this, and every source that deviates from Western consensus is dismissed as "propaganda", "fake news", and "state funded", we will have an encyclopedia that only presents the mainstream Western point of view, to the exclusion of other points of view. The erroneous assumption that underlies this way of thinking is that the mainstream Western consensus represents "objectivity", while any deviation from that point of view represents an incorrigible "bias".
Biases are sort of like accents - almost nobody thinks that they have one, especially if everyone around them has the same accent that they do. Many small-minded people in the USA, who think that they don't have an accent, might make comments like "people from India don't speak English the right way". That's pretty much the attitude I get from the comments here, at the Venezuelanalysis RFC, and at many, many other places on Wikipedia. Non-Westerners don't do journalism "the right way", as defined by models like CNN and BBC.
The fact that sources that contradict mainstream Western consensus are so casually dismissed as "biased" suggests that most editors (practically all of whom are Westerners) are so steeped in pro-Western narratives that those narratives appear "normal" and "unbiased", and it also suggests that most editors aren't conversant in non-Western points of view about politics, which is why, when exposed to them, they apply a reductive analysis and conclude that they must be "fake news" or "pro-X propaganda". It's a huge blind spot on this website.
This source should be used to establish the notability of a topic, or to cite attributed opinions, but shouldn't be used to make Wikivoice statements of fact. Philomathes2357 (talk) 23:38, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
It's frankly depressing to see how giddy editors are to deprecate non-Western sources (and much else in your comment) is an aspersion, please strike it. I'm certainly not giddy to deprecate any source, I think your own biases are shown in how you depict other editors. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 12:50, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
"Bias is not unreliablity" is a straw man. This is an unreliable source because it's unreliable not because it's biased. Plenty of non-western media is excellent. From the same region, Enab Baladi, The New Arab, Asharq Al-Awsat, Al-Arabiya, The National, Arab News (mostly), Orient News are all reliable. Similarly, editors arguing that La Patilla is more reliable than Venezeulanalysis are not doing so because it is more western (in fact VA has more western writers than La Patilla does). Please don't let your general bugbear about bias overcome a basic evaluation of a dreadful news website. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:07, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
Honestly, wp:cir, this site is obviously fake news. Cursed Peace (talk) 04:05, 19 October 2023 (UTC) Sock

Discussion (Al-Mayadeen)

@Alaexis: and @Shadowwarrior8: who have already given thoughts about the organisation. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:17, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Also pinging @Bobfrombrockley, who had very recently commented on this "news"-network elsewhere. Shadowwarrior8 (talk) 19:41, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
Seems at best "reliability unclear" or "consensus unclear." I had looked at it and presumed it a WP:NEWSORG, with a bias, but republishing material from other problematic sources is problematic. Andre🚐 22:29, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

RfC: Correo del Orinoco (Orinoco Tribune)

Latest comment: 11 months ago17 comments8 people in discussion
There is consensus that Correo del Orinoco is generally unreliable. It is near-unanimous that this source is not reliable, with responses ranging between generally unreliable and deprecate. There was not enough engagement in the RFC to take a step as significant as deprecation, so generally unreliable it is. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:56, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


What is the reliability of Correo del Orinoco (Orinoco Tribune)?

A previous discussion in this noticeboard from 2010 mentioned Correo del Orinoco: Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 55#Break 6: on Correo del Orinoco

  • Option 3 (at least)/4: Correo del Orinoco is a Venezuelan state-owned newspaper that is part of the Bolivarian Communication and Information System state media conglomerate. There's already a precedent in this noticeboard of demonstrating that outlets from this conglomerate publish and amplify misleading and/or false information, and that the fact that Venezuela is a country with a low level of freedom of the press affects its reliability, the main example being WP:TELESUR.
A report from the Venezuelan fact-checking coalition C-Informa "Portals of lies: the international swarm of 'independent media' at the service of Chavista narratives" (also mentioned above, in the currently opened RfC: Venezuelanalysis) explains how Correo del Orinoco is directed by a Venezuelan government official and has amplified propaganda in the past:
  • In the case of media such as Venezuelanalysis, Orinoco Tribune and even the now censored Aporrea, a team full of current and former Venezuelan diplomats in the United States, former ministers and both former and active editors of Telesur, RT and Venezuelan state media operates.
  • It is directed by Jesús Rodríguez-Espinoza, who was Venezuelan consul in Chicago, between 2008 and 2017, replacing Martín Sánchez (Aporrea / Venezuelanalysis). His articles were used at the beginning of the digital campaign in favor of Alex Saab.
Its bias and lack of neutrality shows that the outlet does not have editorial independence, and its reliability has already been questioned in Wikipedia discussions throughout the years, including due to the republication from unreliable or deprecated outlets:
  • On the much discussed issue of independence of Venezuelanalysis staff, referring in this particular instance to Eva Golinger, here is evidence of the sort of independence these people have from the Venezuelan State [...] For the language impaired, it means that the Chavez regime, through Congress, has approved some $3.2 million, so that Golinger's propaganda rag can reach more people. – Alekboyd, WP:RSN/Archive 55, 10:46, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
  • After all that research, you did not find that Eva Golinger just got $3.2 million from the Chavez regime to carry on with her propaganda activities in Correo del Orinoco? – Alekboyd, WP:RSN/Archive 58, 3 March 2010
  • Correo del Orinoco and Venezuelanalysis are both parrots of state propaganda. – SandyGeorgia, WT:VEN/Archive 4, 15 April 2019
  • According to the Antisemitism in Venezuela 2013 report by the Venezuelan Confederation of Israelite Associations (CAIV) which focuses on the issue of antisemitism in Venezuela, "distorted news, omissions and false accusations" of Israel originate from Iranian media in Latin America, especially from HispanTV. Such "distorted news" is then repeated by the Russia's RT News and Cuba's Prensa Latina, and Venezuela’s state media, including SIBCI, AVN, TeleSUR, [...] Correo del Orinoco and Ciudad CCS – SandyGeorgia, WP:RSN/Archive 265#RfC: HispanTV, 19 April 2019
  • The recently created Orinoco Tribune [...] uses Telesur, Grayzone and Venezuelanalysis (see WP:RSP) as its primary sources – ZiaLater, WP:RSN/Archive 287#RfC: Grayzone, 18 December 2019
  • [...] Chavismo forced owners of paper manufacturing companies into exile on bogus charges so they could take over paper production and allocate paper only to Chavez-friendly press like Correo del Orinoco (2009) [...] – SandyGeorgia, WP:RSN/Archive 415#RfC: La Patilla, 15 August 2023
Indeed, a quick look through fact checkers will show a consistent history of publishing misleading and/or false information, and how Orinoco Tribune participated in the influence operation on behalf of Colombian businessman Alex Saab, currently indicted with money laundering charges:
Fact check articles (2016-2023)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
All in all, Correo del Orinoco cannot be considered a reliable source. --NoonIcarus (talk) 12:42, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Option 3 (at least): This site is far, far worse than either Venezuelanalysis and Telesur; it is basically a version of them that doesn't even attempt to mix in any respectable reporting or analysis. It is essentially an aggregation site for kooks and conspiracists. On the current frontpage there is content syndicated from Grayzone and Al-Mayadeen for example. I don't think it's necessarily worth deprecating, but we wouldn't lose anything by never using it ever. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:16, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Option 2 1) like any other source, its "reliability in context" is what matters. Checking the first article of the 92 pages     that it's used in, I see no reason to believe that what is attributed to an official document would be unreliable or made-up. A quick search for the "Official Gazette No. 39,454" brings up this source, which confirms that Bashar al Assad was indeed a recipient of the "Order of the Liberator". Without the crucial information that is listed in the first source, it would be near impossible to verify this simple fact. 2) I didn't ask for this RfC in particular. What I did ask is for the OP to stop removing all the sources that are associated with the Venezuelan government (including government official websites) and instead, to discuss them on this board. M.Bitton (talk) 12:38, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
    If it's "near impossible to verify a simple fact" without using Venezuela state sources, the fact is probably undue. And I find it hard to believe that for chavismo to install what was once Venezuela's highest honor on someone of the "caliber" of Bashar al-Assad is not mentioned elsewhere. So. Here are just a few sources that will provide some context and relevance: [131][132] [133] [134] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:40, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
    I don't buy into the UNDUE when it comes to simple facts such as this one (numerous first class imbeciles have decorations of all kinds listed in their article) and in any case, that example was given to illustrate a point. M.Bitton (talk) 15:52, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
    The Venezuelan government has lied even about its own official documents in the past. Since we're talking about Venezuela's Official Gazette, the Foreign Affairs Ministry claimed that Colombian business had been appointed as a diplomat (special envoy) in the Official Gazette N° 6.373 Extraordinary. It required lawyers from Saab's current trial in the United States to look after the original document in the Library of Congress (a third and independent source) to demonstrate that this was false, and said appointment never took place. Correo del Orinoco continues repeating this false information ad nauseam, even after a year it has been debunked and published by fact checkers. As Sandy has mentioned, if a fact is relevant enough, it will surely be covered in independent sources. In the case of Assad's condecoration, there are a couple (besides the ones above): Reuters, El País, Chicago Tribune, La Nación.
I started the RfC on Correo del Orinoco because it was the last source whose reliability I disputed, and it also had more uses than Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias (26 uses    , as of this date), but both sources are part of Bolivarian Communication and Information System media conglomerate, just as the deprecated WP:TELESUR, and routinely publish each others' news (something that I explained in a comment linked in the edit summaries but that you refused to read, saying that it was "an irrelevant discussion"). Most of these issues affect the other outlets in question as a result. --NoonIcarus (talk) 09:55, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
Are you suggesting that the other governments don't lie? What Sandy said doesn't hold much water: if a list is DUE, then so is every factual entry in it. M.Bitton (talk) 10:35, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
First, that's whataboutism and clearly not what I said. Second, it's a response to your claim saying I see no reason to believe that what is attributed to an official document would be unreliable or made-up, giving an example where it happened. Plenty of reliable sources can be found about these documents and are more credible about its content (and especially its interpretation). --NoonIcarus (talk) 11:26, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
No it's not and what I said is not a claim, it's statement. If the info is verifiable and plenty of reliable sources can easily be found to support it, then why did you obliterate it? M.Bitton (talk) 11:30, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
I agree with M.Bitton that NoonIcarus was probably wrong to remove the fact about Assad's honour from his BLP; it would have been better to flag with "unreliable inline" or "better source" so other editors could verify and insert alternative sources. But that's an issue with how generally unreliable sources are dealt with, not an argument against the general unreliability of this source. (If the source was deprecated, then full removal would be the correct thing to do of course.) BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:28, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
I have treated the source in the same way as Telesur, as they both have the same editorial line and are part of the Bolivarian Communication and Information System conglomerate. Of course, I'm well aware that these removals can be disputed, and hopefully this RfC can help clearing that out. I only included Option 3 as an option given that I know there have been complaints about deprecating a source during its first discussion, but giving the precedents and evidence I think it is the right decision. --NoonIcarus (talk) 11:29, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

911truth.org

Latest comment: 11 months ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Not a reliable source, so are any of these uses justified?[136] Eg], for Henry Poole (technologist), where it is the only reference, it's used for "He is a signatory to the 9/11 Truth Statement." Doug Weller talk 12:40, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Boyd Petersen book review

Latest comment: 11 months ago8 comments4 people in discussion

Boyd Petersen provided a book review of Martha Beck's "Leaving the Saints" book (in which accuses her father Hugh Nibley of sexual abuse). The book review appears in a the Journal of Mormon History (JMH), an independent academic article that has generally been considered a reliable source. The review had been used to support the inclusion in the Hugh Nibley article of the statement, "Boyd Petersen, Nibley's biographer and son-in-law, also rejected Beck's claims. In his response to Leaving the Saints, he argues that the book contains other inconsistencies and instances of hyperbole", but the inclusion has been challenged arguing that it does not meet WP:RS due to Petersen's relation to Hugh Nibley. Can the book review in JMH be used as a reliable source for this statement in the article? FyzixFighter (talk) 05:26, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

  • There are a lot of sourcing issues in that article, many with the same problems as this review. This source, and many others in the article, are from LDS apologetics publishers and publications which are problematic in a BLP given their lack of true independence. Apart from the RS questions, in this case the two citations to reviews seem undue. It is probably enough to say that other close family members disputed the claims without the exposition. Banks Irk (talk) 13:02, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
Can you clarify what you mean by BLP issue - Nibley is dead? Also, this source (Journal of Mormon History) is not an LDS apologetic publication but an independent (not associated with the LDS Church or any of its education bodies like BYU) academic journal by the Mormon History Association, whose member include those who reject Mormonism. If this were BYU Studies, FAIR, or Interpreter, then I would agree regarding "true independence" and there should be more pause. --FyzixFighter (talk) 14:48, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
His daughter isn't dead. The BLP standards apply to statements about living persons, even in other articles. Banks Irk (talk) 15:34, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
Petersen is alive. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:28, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
  • User:FyzixFighter - it seems a semi-reasonable RS for that line covering this part of reaction to her book. It would be more solid support for a line if phrased that there was a book review thus being RS for fact of there being a review and attribution to it being his own words, e.g. "In a book review, Nibley's biographer and son-in-law Boyd Petersen rejected Beck's claims and argued that the book contains 'persistent hyperbolic assertions and outright distortions of fact' ". Or cite to a mention in a third party covering the controversy which says something about the Boyd Petersen book review and convey how they characterise it. e.g. the NY Times, although third party coverage might itself be giving a POV rather than just factual reporting. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 19:24, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
    To call it a review so as to suggest some disinterested dispassionate analysis is a big stretch. He's reviewing is as a family member disputing claims on the basis of his personal experience and relationship with the subject. Banks Irk (talk) 01:31, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
  • @FyzixFighter: is there a particular reason you opened this without noting so in the talk page discussion Talk:Hugh Nibley#Peterson or pinging me? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:27, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

1960s & 1970s sources for "Kurds are an Iranian ethnic group"

Latest comment: 11 months ago5 comments3 people in discussion

Are these sources too old to support a statement in Wikivoice in the lead of Kurds that "Kurds are an Iranian ethnic group"?

  1. "Kurds" (1978). Encyclopedia Islamica, 2nd edition (current edition is 3rd).
  2. J. Limbert. (1968). "The Origins and Appearance of the Kurds in Pre-Islamic Iran." Iranian Studies [137]
  3. C.E. Bosworth (1977). The Medieval History of Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. [138]

These came up at an ongoing RFC at Talk:Kurds#RFC: Iranian ethnic group. I argued WP:AGEMATTERS (because 21st century sources are available) and another editor suggested taking it to RSN, so here I am. Thanks for your feedback. Levivich (talk) 15:39, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

As WP:AGEMATTERS says Be sure to check that older sources have not been superseded.... Sources don't go off like milk, they get superseded by new knowledge. If new sources don't describe Kurds as an Iranian ethnic group, then they have been superseded, but if new sources don't contradict these sources them they are still RS. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:57, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
Interesting point. I think it's been superseded but in the RFC it seems not everyone agrees. One newer source seems to say it:
  • Garnik Asatrian's Prolegomena to the Study of the Kurds (Iran and the Caucasus, 2009), p. 8: The ancient history of the Kurds, as in case of many other Iranian ethnic groups (Baluchis, etc.), can be reconstructed but in a very tentative and abstract form.
Others say something different:
  • A Modern History of the Kurds (4th ed., I.B. Tauris, 2021) by David McDowall, pp. 8-9: It is doubtful that the Kurds form an ethnically coherent whole in the sense that they have a common ancestry.
  • Sebastian Maisel's Kurds: An Encyclopedia of Life, Culture, and Society (ABC-Clio, 2018), p. xiii: The origins of the Kurds are contested, but for many they represent an indigenous group of upper Mesopotamia often described as the mountain people in the Zagros and Taurus. (The Zagros Mountains are in Iran; the Taurus Mountains are in Turkey.)
  • Michael Eppel, A people without a state: the Kurds from the rise of Islam to the dawn of nationalism (University of Texas Press, 2016), pp. 4-5: The similarity between the signifiers Carduchians and Kurds and the geographic location of the Carduchian country have been the bases for the identification of Carduchians as ancient Kurds by scholars ... Other scholars have considered the Kurds to be descendants of the ancient Medes ... who remained in the mountains of Kurdistan and did not undergo “Iranization” ... Still other scholars ... have expressed doubts as to the identification of the Carduchians as forebears of the Kurds and reject the connection between the Kurds and the Medes ... emphasiz[ing] the connection between the Kurds and the Cyrtii (Kurti)...
  • John Shoup's Ethnic Groups of Africa and the Middle East: An Encyclopedia (ABC-Clio, 2011), p. 159: ...the Kurdish people are thought to be descended from the Carduchii...An Iranian people by language, the Kurdish people are ethnically diverse due to intermarriage with other ethnic groups...
  • Denise Natali, The Kurds and the State: Evolving National Identity in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran (Syracuse University Press, 2005), p. xvii: Although some Kurds trace Kurdish civilization to the seventh millenium, the majority date their origins to the Median Empire in the sixth century B.C. ... [scholars] emphasize the uniqueness of Kurdish identity ... Kurds are Kurds because they are not Arabs, Persians, or Turks.
So is that superseded? I guess the question is, in determining what to say in wikivoice, should the 1960s and 1970s works be given equal weight to the 21st-century works? Or less weight? Or more weight? Levivich (talk) 19:24, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
In case where there is disagreement between academic sources, as seems to be the case here, it might be best to describe that disagreement in the article. Not all details have a single clear definition. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:31, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
This. Can attribute stuff (author, date) too. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 11:33, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Onedio.com

Latest comment: 11 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Turkish website: https://onedio.com/. Posting here because 126 articles seem to be using this as a source. (no wonder, they show up on Google News)
At first glance it doesn't seem that bad, they are at least ticking some boxes:

  • They have an editorial policy (YMMV with machine translation)
  • They have an article at w:tr:Onedio.
  • Their Facebook and Twitter accounts have been verified.
  • They have apps on both the Google Play store and Apple's app store. (particularly the latter requires jumping through some more hoops AFAIK)

But these mostly indicate that a source is to some degree established, WP:DAILYMAIL probably passes these checks as well.
Their editorial policy states (translated) "onedio.com is independent of both government and partisan interests". Umm, not while Erdoğan is in charge I think, but I can't prove that.
Their editorial policy also states (translated) "We do not publish information and content taken, collected or brought together from other sources without specifying the source". Too bad I just caught them with their hand in the cookie jar. This article on onedio.com is heavily based on our article about SSSniperWolf. It's listing the same facts in roughly the same order but interspersed with photos from various sources. Some lines seem almost copy-pasted even after double translation decay, e.g. "Lia Shelesh hosted the Clickbait show in which social media users competed in unusual challenges." when I wrote "In 2017 she hosted the show Clickbait in which social media influencers competed in unusual challenges."
I hereby give Onedio.com a license to use my contribution to the article without attribution or ShareAlike requirements (which probably covers most of their article), so nobody go harassing them please. But it seems we shouldn't use them as a source to avoid WP:CIRCULAR. If the source is deemed conditional, great care should be taken to avoid any Wikipedia articles they rehashed. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 03:32, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

why is there no platform where everyone can write the news they want - after all, everyone in the social media world is considered a kind of journalist now?[139] which probably explains why their articles make liberal use of Wikipedia articles, and why their shouldn't be considered an RS. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:28, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
We Tell You Your Personality According to the Woman You Find Attractive! is not particularly confidence-inspiring either. Half of my personality assessment seems to be wrong!  
On the other hand, the outcome of We Explain Your Psychology According to This Color Test! is almost completely spot on! — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 03:42, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

DraftHistory.com

Latest comment: 11 months ago6 comments4 people in discussion

A significant number of the 303 articles in the category Category:Lists_of_National_Football_League_draftees_by_college_football_team are sourced only to this website, which appears to be the work of a single person. It does however appear to have existed for 23 years, so that's one thing, and I'm sure there's a good chance it may be accurate. So the question is - is this good enough, and does an alternative reliable source exist for these statistical articles? Black Kite (talk) 13:37, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

It looks WP:SELFPUBLISHed. If RSes cite it or the author is an expert maybe its reliable but if not its just a wp:fansite Softlem (talk) 13:53, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Definitely a WP:SPS. The site and his Twitter feed are frequently cited in other questionable sites (rather than doing their own research and reporting), which might indicate some recognition of expertise, but he's never been independently published, so he's not a WP:SME. Moreover, self-published sources, even by experts at are not to be used in BLPs. Banks Irk (talk) 14:00, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
If he could be shown to have been published by independent reliable sources then he would be usable in standard articles, but WP:BLPSPS/WP:SPS are quite clear Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:29, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
Latest comment: 11 months ago6 comments4 people in discussion

Several news sites owned by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) are used as sources in Thomas Goltz article, a US-based journalist known for his coverage of Armenia-Azerbaijan topics. The ARF is an ultra-nationalist and irredentist (official ideology - United Armenia) party in Armenia. Sources such as armenianweekly.com (the English-language edition of Hairenik, which has faced accusations of sympathizing with Nazism and Anti-semitism), horizonweekly.ca are one-sided and clearly represent a fringe POV. Some users argue that these are are reliable sources for stating facts in controversial topics like Armenia-Azerbaijan, but I believe that they should only be used in articles when representing the POV of the website or the ARF on the issue. Aredoros87 (talk) 18:28, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Doesn't look like it's been discussed before, this could use some input from editors knowledgeable of the subject area. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:42, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
Reliable source for ARF being "ultra-nationalist"? And Hairenik hasn't been accused of "sympathizing with Nazism and Anti-semitism", that was Aredoros's original research interpretation from a single 1940s primary source that was a self-described "propaganda agency".[140] --KhndzorUtogh (talk) 23:09, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
Since we could not reach an agreement, it's pointless to discuss the same topic here, but I have to respond this because KhndzorUtogh is misleading people here:
that was Aredoros's original research interpretation from a single 1940s primary source
False. There were 3 different secondary sources in that article, but yesterday just before writing here Khndzor deleted sourced content.
was a self-described "propaganda agency".
We literally had the exact same conversation on talk page ~20 days before. The user did the same cherry-picking before, and I explained then the user changed topic to played the game (WP:PTG). Please beaware of talk pages if you are considering to take into account Khndzor's baseless accusations. Thanks. Aredoros87 (talk) 09:30, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
ARF is an Armenian nationalist party that claims territories of 3 neighboring states (as mentioned in Wikipedia article about them). At one point it was even banned in Armenia. I don't think the sources affiliated with this party could be considered neutral. Grandmaster 17:38, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
If the neutrality of the sources is the issues then as per WP:BIASED maybe in-text attribution is an option. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:15, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
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